The Project Gutenberg eBook of Criminal Sociology
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Title: Criminal Sociology
Author: Enrico Ferri
Release date: March 1, 1996 [eBook #477]
Most recently updated: April 1, 2015
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRIMINAL SOCIOLOGY ***
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on the decrease. And yet a cursory examination of the facts is sufficient to show that a decrease in the prison population is merely the result of shorter sentences and the substitution of fines or other similar penalties for imprisonment. If the list of offences for trial before a judge and jury should exhibit any symptoms of diminution, this circumstance is immediately seized upon as a proof that the criminal population is declining, and yet the diminution may merely arise from the fact that large numbers of cases which used to be tried before a jury are now dealt with summarily by a magistrate. In other words, what we witness is a change of judicial procedure, but not necessarily a decrease of crime. Again, when it is pointed out that the number of persons for trial for indictable offences in England and Wales amounted to 53,044 in 1874-8 and 56,472 in 1889-93, we are at a loss to see what colour these figures give to the statement that there has been a real and substantial decrease of crime. The increase, it is true, may not be keeping pace with the growth of the general population, but, as an eminent judge recently stated from the bench, this is to be accounted for by the fact that the public is every year becoming more lenient and more unwilling to prosecute. But an increase of leniency, however excellent in itself, is not to be confounded with a decrease of crime. In the study of social phenomena our paramount duty is to look at facts and not appearances. But whether criminality is keeping pace with the growth of population or not it is a problem of great
magnitude all the same, and it will not be solved, as Professor Ferri points out, by a mere resort to punishments of greater rigour and severity. On this matter he is at one with the Scotch departmental committee appointed to inquire into the best means of dealing with habitual offenders, vagrants, and juveniles. As far as the suppression of vagrancy is concerned the members of the committee are unanimously of opinion that ``the severest enactments of the general law are futile, and that the best results have been obtained by the milder provisions of more recent statutes.'' They also speak of the ``utter inadequacy of the present system in all the variety of detail which it offers to deter the habitual offender from a course of life which devolves the cost of his maintenance on the prison and the poorhouse when he is not preying directly on the public.'' The committee state that they have had testimony from a large number of witnesses supporting the view that ``long sentences of imprisonment effect no good result,'' and they arrive at the conclusion that to double the present sentences would not diminish the number of habitual offenders. In this conclusion they are at one with the views of the Royal Commission on Penal Servitude, which acquiesced in the objection to the penal servitude system on the ground that it ``not only fails to reform offenders, but in the case of the less hardened criminals and especially first offenders produces a deteriorating effect.'' A similar opinion was recently expressed by the Prisons Committee presided over by Mr. Herbert Gladstone. As soon as punishment reaches
a point at which it makes
men worse than they were before, it becomes useless as an
instrument of reformation or social defence.
The proper method of arriving at a more or less satisfactory
solution of the criminal problem is to inquire into the causes
which are producing the criminal population, and to institute
remedies based upon the results of such an inquiry. Professor
Ferri's volume has this object in view. The first chanter, on the
data of Criminal Anthropology, is an inquiry into the individual
conditions which tend to produce criminal habits of mind and
action. The second chapter, on the data of criminal statistics,
is an examination of the adverse social conditions which tend to
drive certain sections of the population into crime. It is
Professor Ferri's contention that the volume of crime will not be
materially diminished by codes of criminal law however skilfully
they may be constructed, but by an amelioration of the adverse
individual and social conditions of the community as a whole.
Crime is a product of these adverse conditions, and the only
effective way of grappling with it is to do away as far as
possible with the causes from which it springs. Although criminal
codes can do comparatively little towards the reduction of crime,
they are absolutely essential for the protection of society.
Accordingly, the last chapter, on Practical Reforms, is intended
to show how criminal law and prison administration may be made
more effective for purposes of social defence.
PAGE
PAGE should be distinct functionaries,
173--The student of law should study criminals, 174--Training of
police and prison officers, 174--The status of the criminal judge,
175--The authority of the judge, 176. III. The jury, 177--Origin
of the jury, 178--Advantages of the jury, 179--Defects of the
jury, 180--The jury as a protection to liberty, 182--The jury and
criminal law, 184--Juries untrained and irresponsible, 186--
Numbers fatal to wisdom, 188--Defects of judges, 193--Difference
between the English and Continental jury, 194--Social evolution
and the jury, 196--The jury compared to the electorate, 197--How
to utilise the jury, 198. IV. Existing prison systems a failure,
201--Defects of existing penal systems, 201--The abuse of short
sentences, 202--The growth of recidivism, 203--Garofalo's scheme
of punishments, 204--Von Liszt's scheme of punishments, 206--The
basis of a rational system of punishment, 207--The indeterminate
sentence, 207--Flogging, 210--The indefinite sentence for habitual
offenders, 211--Van Hamel's proposals as to sentences, 212--The
liberation of prisoners on an indefinite sentence, 213--The
supervision of punishment, 213--Conditional release, 215--Good
conduct test in prisons, 216--Police supervision, 216--
Indemnification of the victims Of crime, 217--The duty of the
State towards the victims of crime, 222--Defensive measures must
be adapted to the different classes of criminals, 225--Uniformity
of punishment, 225--The prison staff, 227--Classification of
prisoners, 227--Prison labour, 228. V. Asylums for criminal
lunatics, 230--The treatment of insane criminals, 232--Crime and
madness, 234--Classification of asylums for criminal lunatics,
237--The treatment of born criminals, 238--The death penalty,
239--Extension of the death penalty, 243--Inadequacy of the death
penalty, 245--Imprisonment for life, 246--Transportation, 248--
Labour settlements, 249--Establishments for habitual criminals,
250--Criminal heredity, 251--Incorrigible offenders, 252--
Cumulative sentences, 253--Uncorrected or incorrigible criminals,
254--Cellular prisons, 256--Solitary confinement, 257--The
progressive system of imprisonment, 257--The evils of cellular
imprisonment, 260 --The cell does not secure separation, 262--
Costliness of the cellular system, 263--Labour under the cellular
system, 264--Open-air work the best for prisoners, 265--The
treatment of habitual criminals, 266--The treatment of occasional
``measuring human
responsibility in accordance with different craniological
types.''[2]
various offences in their abstract character, on the
assumption that the criminal, apart from particular cases which
are evident and appreciable, is a man of the ordinary type, under
normal conditions of intelligence and feeling, the anthropological
observers of crime, on the other hand, study the criminal first of
all by means of direct observations, in anatomical and
physiological laboratories, in prisons and madhouses, organically
and physically, comparing him with the typical characteristics of
the normal man, as well as with those of the mad and the
degenerate.
Before recounting the general data of criminal anthropology, it is
necessary to lay particular stress upon a remark which I made in
the original edition of this work, but which our opponents have
too frequently ignored.
We must carefully discriminate between the technical value of
anthropological data concerning the criminal man and their
scientific function in criminal sociology.
For the student of criminal anthropology, who builds up the
natural history of the criminal, every characteristic has an
anatomical, or a physiological, or a psychological value in
itself, apart from the sociological conclusions which it may be
possible to draw from it. The technical inquiry into these bio-
psychical characteristics is the special work of this new science
of criminal anthropology.
Now these data, which are the conclusions of the anthropologist,
are but starting-points for the criminal sociologist, from which
he has to reach his legal and social conclusions. Criminal
anthropology is to the whole
matter in detail, I will simply reproduce from my study of
homicide a summary of results for a single category of these
anomalies, which a methodical observation of every class of
criminals will carry further and render more precise, as Lombroso
has already shown (see the fourth edition of his work, 1889, p.
273).
Amongst the statistical data exhibiting the primary
characteristics of the majority of criminals, the data connected
with relapsed criminals are especially conspicuous. Though
relapses, like first offences, are partly due to social
conditions, they also have a manifest biological cause, since,
under the operation of the same penal system, there are some
liberated prisoners who relapse and some who do not.
The statistics of relapse are unfortunately very difficult to
collect, on account of differences in the legislation of different
countries, and in the preparation of records, which, even under
the more general adoption of anthropometrical identification,
rarely succeed in preventing the use of fresh names by
professional criminals. So that we may still say, in the words of
one who is a very good judge in this matter, M. Yvern would be impossible
to state accurately what proportion the numbers given bear to the
actual number; but I am justified in saying, from all the
materials which I have collected and compared in the aforesaid
essay, that the number of relapses in Europe is generally between
50 and 60 per cent., and certainly rather above than below this
limit. Whilst the Italian statistics, for instance, give 14 per
cent. of relapses amongst prisoners sentenced to penal servitude,
I found by experience 37 per cent; out of 346 who admitted to me
that they had relapsed; and, amongst those who had been sentenced
to simple imprisonment, I found 60 per cent. out of 363, in place
of the 33 per cent. recorded in the prison statistics. The
difference may be due to the particular conditions of the prisons
which I visited; but in any case it establishes the inadequacy of
the official figures dealing with relapse.
After this statement of a general fact, which proves, as Lombroso
and Espinas said, that ``the relapsed criminal is the rule rather
than the exception,'' we can proceed to set down the special
proportions of relapse for each particular crime, so as to obtain
an indication of the forms of crime which are most frequently
resorted to by habitual criminals.
For Italy I have found that the highest percentages of relapse are
afforded by persons convicted of theft and petty larceny, forgery,
rape, manslaughter, conspiracy, and, at the correctional courts,
vagrancy and mendicity. The lowest percentages are amongst those
convicted of assault and bodily harm, murders, and infanticide.
For France, where legal statistics are remarkably adapted for the
most minute inquiry, I have drawn up the following table of
statistics from the lists of persons convicted at the assize
courts and correctional tribunals, taking an average of the years
1877-81, which is not sensibly affected by the results of
succeeding years.
It will be seen that the average of relapses for crimes against
the person is higher than the average for the most serious cases
of murderous and indecent assault, which are clearly an outcome of
the most anti-social tendencies (such as parricide, murder, rape,
inflicting bodily harm on parents, &c.). Thus homicide and fatal
wounding, though relapse is very frequent in these cases, still
display a less abnormal and more occasional character by their
lower position in the table, as shown in the cases of infanticide,
concealment of birth, and abandonment of infants. As for the very
frequent occurrence of relapse in special crimes, such as assaults
on officials and resistance to authority, which rarely come before
the assize courts--though even there they tend to support the
higher numbers in the tribunals--these are offences which may also
be committed by criminals of every kind, and which, moreover,
depend in some measure on the social factor of police
organisation, and frequently on the psycho-pathological state of
particular individuals.
The somewhat rare occurrence of relapse in such a grave type of
murder as poisoning is noteworthy. But this is only an effect of
the special psychology of these criminals, as I have explained
elsewhere.
Amongst crimes against property, the most frequent relapses are
found in the case of thieves (not including thefts and breaches of
trust by domestic servants, which thus, proving their more
occasional character, confirm the agreement of statistics with
criminal psychology). The same thing is observed in regard to
forgers of commercial documents and to fraudulent bankrupts, who
are partly drawn into crime under the stress of personal or
general crises. And the infrequency of relapse amongst postal
employees condemned for embezzlement, and amongst customs officers
who have been guilty of smuggling, is only a further confirmation
of the inducement to crime by the opportunities met with in each
case, rather than by personal tendencies.
Amongst minor offences, apart from that evasion of supervision
which is no more than a legal condition, there are, both in France
and in Italy, very frequent cases of relapse by vagabonds and
mendicants, which is a consequence of social environment, as well
as of the feeble organisation of the individuals. Other relapses
above the average, included amongst these offences, constitute a
sort of accessory criminality, existing side by side with the
habitual criminality of thieves, murderers, and the like, such as
drunkenness, attacks on public functionaries, infractions of the
regulations of domicile, &c.
In thefts and resistance to authorities, relapse is less frequent
here than in the assize courts, for in the majority of these minor
offences, in their general forms, there is a greater number of
occasional offences, as is also the case with bankruptcies,
defamation, abuse, rural offences, &c., which demonstrate
their more occasional character by their very low figures.
Hence the statistics of general and specific relapse indirectly
confirm the fact that criminals, as a whole, have no uniform
anthropological type; and that the bio-psychical types and
anomalies belong more especially to the category of habitual
criminals and those born into the criminal class, who, after all,
are the only ones hitherto studied by criminal anthropologists.
What, then, is the numerical proportion of habitual criminals to
the aggregate number of criminals?
In the absence of direct inquiry, it is possible to get at this
proportion indirectly, from facts of two kinds. In the first
place, a study of the works on criminal anthropology supplies us
with an approximate figure, since the biological characteristics
united in individuals, in sufficient number to create a criminal
type, are met with in between forty and fifty per cent. of the
total.
And this conclusion may be confirmed by other data of criminal
statistics.
Whilst the statistics of relapse give us a very limited number of
crimes and offences committed by born and habitual criminals,
science and criminal legislation give us a far more extended
classification.
Ellero reckoned in the penal code of the German Empire 203 crimes
and offences; and I find that the Italian code of 1859 enumerates
about 180, the new code about 200, and the French penal code about
150. Thus the kind of crimes of habitual criminals would
only be about one-tenth of the complete legal classification of
crimes and offences.
It is easy indeed to suppose that born and habitual criminals do
not generally commit political crimes and offences, nor offences
connected with the press, nor against freedom of worship, nor in
corruption of public functionaries, nor misuse of title or
authority; nor calumny, making false attestations or false
reports; nor adultery, incest, or abduction of minors; nor
infanticide, abortion, or palming of children; nor betrayal of
professional secrets; nor bankruptcy offences, nor damage to
property, nor violation of domicile, nor illegal arrests, nor
duels, nor defamation, nor abuse. I say generally; for, as there
are occasional criminals who commit the offences characteristic of
habitual criminality, such as homicides, robberies, rapes, &c., so
there are born criminals who sometimes commit crimes out of their
ordinary course.
It is now necessary to add a few statistical data in respect of
the classification of crime, which I take, like the others, from
the essay already mentioned.
That is to say, habitual criminality would be represented, in
Italy, by about 40 per cent. of the total number of condemned
persons, and by somewhat less in France and Belgium. This would
be accounted for in Belgium by the exclusion of vagrancy; but the
difference is virtually due to the greater frequency in Italy of
certain crimes, such as homicide, highway robbery with violence,
and conspiracies.
Further, it is apparent that in all these countries the types of
habitual criminality, with the exception of thefts and vagrancy,
are in greater proportion at the assizes, on account of their
serious character.
The actual totals, however, are larger at the tribunals, for as,
in the scale of animal life, the greatest fecundity belongs to the
lower and smaller forms, so in the criminal scale, the less
serious offences (such as simple theft, swindling, vagrancy, &c.)
are the more numerous. Thus, out of the total of 38 per cent. in
Italy, 32 belong to the tribunals and 6 to the assizes; out of 35
per cent in France, 33 belong to the tribunals and 2 to the
assizes; and out of 30 per cent. in Belgium, 29 belong to the
tribunals and 1 to the assizes. This also is partly accounted for
by legislative distinctions as to the respective jurisdictions of
these courts.
As to the particulars of the totals, it is found that thefts are
the most numerous types in Italy (20 per cent.), in France (24 per
cent.), in Belgium (23 per cent.), and in Prussia (37 per cent.,
including breaches of trust).[5]
[5] Starke, ``Verbrechen und Verbrecher in Preussen,'' Berlin,
1884, p. 92.
After theft, the most numerous in Italy are vagrancy (5 per
cent.), homicides (4 per cent.), swindling (3 per cent.), forgery
(.9 per cent.), rape (.4 per cent.), conspiracy (.4 per cent.),
and incendiarism (.2 per cent.).
In France and Belgium we find the same relative frequency of
vagrancy and swindling; but homicide, incendiarism, and conspiracy
are less frequent, whilst rape is more common in France (.5 per
cent.) and in Belgium (1 per cent.).
Such then are the most frequent forms of habitual criminality in
the generality of condemned persons; and it will be useful now to
contrast the more frequent forms of occasional criminality. For
Italy the only judicial statistics which are valuable for detailed
inquiry are those of 1863, 1869-72. For France, every volume of
the admirable series of criminal statistics may be utilised.
It will be seen that the frequency of these occasional crimes and
offences in Italy and in France is very variable, though assaults
and wounding, resistance to authorities, damage, defamation and
abuse, are the most numerous in both countries.
The proportion of each offence to the total also varies
considerably, not only through a difference of legislation between
Italy and France in regard to poaching, drunkenness, frauds on
refreshment-house keepers, and so forth, but also by reason of the
different condition of individuals and of society in the two
countries. Thus assaults and wounding, which in Italy comprise 23
per cent. of the total of convictions, reach in France no more
than 14 per cent., whilst resistance to the authorities, &c.,
which
are 4 per cent. in Italy, touch 9 per cent in France.
Sexual crimes and offences (as we saw in the case of rape), such
as abortion, adultery, indecent assaults, and incitement to
immorality, which in Italy present very small and negligible
figures, are more frequent in France. Whilst the illegal carrying
of arms, threats, false witness, escape from detention, violations
of domicile, calumny, are of greater frequency in Italy than in
France, the contrary is true of bankruptcy offences, political and
press crimes and offences, on account of a manifest difference of
the moral, economic, and social conditions of the two countries,
which are plainly discernible behind these apparently dry figures.
In addition to this demonstration, we have given anthropological
and statistical proofs of the fundamental distinction between
habitual and occasional criminals, which had been pointed out by
many observers, but which had hitherto remained a simple assertion
without manifest consequences.
This same distinction ought to be not only the basis of all
sociological theory concerning crime, but also a point of
departure for other distinctions more precise and complete, which
I set forth in my previous studies on criminals, and which were
subsequently reproduced, with more or less of assent, by all
criminal sociologists.
In the first place, it is necessary to distinguish, amongst
habitual criminals, those who present a conspicuous and clinical
form of mental aberration, which accounts for their anti-social
activity.
In the second place, amongst habitual criminals who are not of
unsound mind, however little the inmates of prisons may have been
observed with adequate ideas and experience, there is a clear
indication of a class of individuals, physically or mentally
abnormal, induced to crime by inborn tendencies, which are
manifest from their birth, and accompanied by symptoms of extreme
moral insensibility. Side by side with these, another class
challenges attention, of individuals who have also been criminals
from childhood, and who continue to be so, but who are in a
special degree a product of physical and social environment, which
has persistently driven them into the criminal life, by their
abandonment before and after the first offence, and which,
especially in the great towns, is very often forced upon them by
the actual incitement of their parents.
Amongst occasional criminals, again, a special category is created
by a kind of exaggeration of the characteristics, mainly
psychological, of the type itself. In the case of all occasional
criminals, the crime is brought about rather by the effects of
environment than by the active tendencies of the individual; but
whilst in most of these individuals the deciding cause is only a
circumstance affecting all alike, with a few it is an exceptional
constraint of passion, a sort of psychological tempest, which
drives them into crime.
Thus, then, the entire body of criminals may be classed in five
categories, which as early as 1880 I described as criminal madmen,
born criminals, criminals by contracted habits, occasional
criminals, and criminals of passion.
As already observed, criminal anthropology will not finally
establish itself until it has been developed by biological,
psychological, and statistical monographs on each of these
categories, in such a manner as to present their anthropological
characteristics with greater precision than they have hitherto
attained. So far, observers continue to give us the same
characteristics for a large aggregate of criminals, classifying
them according to the form of their crime rather than according to
their bio-social type. In Lombroso's work, for instance, or in
that of Marro (and to some extent even in my work on homicide),
the characteristics are stated for a total, or for legal
categories of criminals, such as murderers, thieves, forgers, and
so on, which include born criminals, occasional and habitual
criminals, and madmen. The result is a certain measure of
inconsistency, according to the predominance of one type or the
other in the aggregate of criminals under observation. This also
contributes to render the conclusions of criminal anthropology
less evident.
Nevertheless, we may sum up the inquiries which have been made up
to the present time; and in particular we may now point out the
general characteristics of the five classes of criminals, in
accordance with my personal experience in the observation of
criminals. It is to be hoped that successive observations of a
more methodical kind will gradually reinforce the accuracy of this
classification of symptoms.
In the first place, it is evident that in a classification not
exclusively biological, if it is to form the anthropological basis
of criminal sociology, criminals of unsound mind must in all
fairness be included.
The usual objection, recently repeated by M. Joly (``Le Crime,''
p. 62), which holds the term ``criminal madness'' to be self-
contradictory, since a madman is not morally responsible, and
therefore cannot be a criminal, is not conclusive. We maintain
that responsibility to society, the only responsibility common to
all criminals, exists also for criminals of unsound mind.
Nor, again, is it correct to say, with M. Bianchi, that mad
criminals should be referred to psychiatry, and not to criminal
anthropology; for, though psychiatry is concerned with mad
criminals in a psycho-pathological sense, this does not prevent
criminal anthropology and sociology from also concerning
themselves with the same subjects, in order to constitute the
natural history of the criminal, and to suggest remedies in the
interest of society.
As for criminals of unsound mind, it is necessary to begin by
placing in a separate category such as cannot, after the studies
of Lombroso and the Italian school of psychiatry, be distinguished
from the born criminals properly so-called. These are the persons
tainted with a form of insanity which is known under various
names, from the ``moral insanity'' of Pritchard to the ``reasoning
madness'' of Verga. Moral insanity, illustrated by the works of
Mendel, Legrand du Saulle, Maudsley, Krafft-Ebing, Savage, Hugues,
Hollander, Tamburini, Bonvecchiato, which, with the lack or
atrophy of the moral or social sense, and of _*apparent_ soundness
of mind, is properly speaking only the essential psychological
condition of the born criminal.
Beyond these morally insane people, who are very rare--for, as
Krafft-Ebing and Lombroso have pointed out, they are found more
frequently in prisons than in mad-houses--there is the unhappily
large body of persons tainted by a common and clinical form of
mental alienation, all of whom are apt to become criminal.
The whole of these criminals of unsound mind cannot be included in
a single category; and such, indeed, is the opinion expressed by
Lombroso, in the second volume of the fourth edition of his work,
after his descriptive analysis of the chief forms of mental
alienation. As a matter of fact, not only are the organic, and
especially the psychological, characteristics of criminal madmen
sometimes identical with and sometimes opposed to those of born
and occasional criminals, but these very characteristics vary
considerably between the different forms of mental alienation, in
spite of the identity of the crime committed.
It is further to be observed, in respect of criminal madmen, that
this category also includes all the intermediary types between
complete madness and a rational condition, who remain in what
Maudsley has called the ``middle zone.'' The most frequent
varieties in the criminality of these partially insane persons, or
``matto attacks upon
statesmen, who are generally men with a grievance, irascible men,
writers of insane documents, and the like, such as Passanante,
Guiteau, and Maclean.
In the same category are those who commit terrible crimes without
motive, and who nevertheless, according to the complacent
psychology of the classical school, would be credited with a
maximum of moral soundness.
Again, there are the necrophiles, like Sergeant Bertrand, Verzeni,
Menesclou, and very probably the undetected ``Jack the Ripper'' of
London, who are tainted with a form of sexual psychopathy. Yet
again there are such as are tainted with hereditary madness, and
especially the epileptics and epileptoids, who may also be
assigned to the class of born criminals, according to the
plausible hypothesis of Lombroso as to the fundamental identity of
congenital criminality, moral madness, and epilepsy. I have
always found in my own experience that outrageous murders, not to
be explained according to the ordinary psychology of criminals,
are accompanied by psychical epilepsy, or larvea.
Born or instinctive criminals are those who most frequently
present the organic and psychological characteristics established
by criminal anthropology. These are either savage or brutal men,
or crafty and idle, who draw no distinction between homicide,
robbery or other kinds of crime, and honest industry. ``They are
criminals just as others are good workingmen,'' says Fr punishment affects them
much less than the menace of punishment, or does not affect them
at all, since they regard imprisonment as a natural risk of their
occupation, as masons regard the fall of a roof, or as miners
regard fire-damp. ``They do not suffer in prison. They are like
a painter in his studio, dreaming of their next masterpiece. They
are on good terms with their gaolers, and even know how to make
themselves useful.''[5]
[5] Moreau, ``Souvenirs de la petite et grande Roquette,'' Paris,
1884, ii. 440.
The born criminals and the occasional criminals constitute the
majority of the characteristic and diverse types of homicide and
thief. Prison governors call them ``gaol-birds.'' They pass on
from the police to the judge and to the prison, and from the
prison to the police and to the judge, with a regularity which has
not yet impaired the faith of law-makers in the efficacy of
punishment as a cure for crime.[6]
[6] Wayland, ``The Incorrigible,'' in the _Journal of Mental
Science_, 1888. Sichart, ``Criminal Incorrigibles.''
No doubt the idea of a born criminal is a direct challenge to the
traditional belief that the conduct of every man is the outcome of
his free will, or at most of his lack of education rather than of
his original physio-psychical constitution. But, in the first
place, even public opinion, when not prejudiced in favour of the
so-called consequences of irresponsibility, recognises in many
familiar and everyday cases that there are criminals who, without
being mad, are still not as ordinary men; and the reporters call
them ``human tigers,'' ``brutes,'' and the like. And in the
second place, the scientific proofs of these hereditary
tenden cies to crime, even apart from the clinical forms of
mental alienation, are now so numerous that it is useless to
insist upon them further.
The third class is that of the criminals whom, after my prison
experience, I have called criminals by contracted habit. These
are they who, not presenting the anthropological characteristics
of the born criminals, or presenting them but slightly, commit
their first crime most commonly in youth, or even in childhood--
almost invariably a crime against property, and far more through
moral weakness, induced by circumstances and a corrupting
environment, than through inborn and active tendencies. After
this, as M. Joly observes, either they are led on by the impunity
of their first offences, or, more decisively, prison associations
debilitate and corrupt them, morally and physically, the cell
degrades them, alcoholism renders them stupid and subject to
impulse, and they continually fall back into crime, and become
chronically prone to it. And society, which thus abandons them,
before and after they leave their prison, to wretchedness,
idleness, and temptations, gives them no assistance in their
struggle to gain an honest livelihood, even when it does not
thrust them back into crime by harassing police regulations, which
prevent them from finding or keeping honest employment.[7]
[7] Fliche, ``Comment en devient Criminel,'' Paris, 1886.
Of those criminals who begin by being occasional criminals, and
end, after progressive degeneration, by exhibiting the features of
the born criminals, Thomas More said, ``What is this but to make
thieves for the pleasure of hanging them?'' And it is just
this class of criminals whom measures of social prevention might
reduce to a minimum, for by abolishing the causes we abolish the
effects.
Apart from their organic and psychological characteristics, innate
or acquired, there are two bio-sociological symptoms which seem to
me to be common, though for distinct reasons, to born criminals
and habitual criminals. I mean precocity and relapse. The
occasional crime and the crime of passion do not, as a rule, occur
before manhood, and rarely or never lead to relapse.
Here are a few figures concerning precocity, derived from
international prison statistics:--
PRISONERS UNDER 20 YEARS OF AGE. Male. Female.
__________________________________________________________________
p.c. p.c.
Italy (1871--6) ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 8.8 6.8
France ('72-5) ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 10 7.6
Prussia ('71-7--not over 19 years) ... ... ... 2.8 2.6
Austria ('72-5) ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 9.6 10.6
Hungary ('72-6) ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 4.2 9
England ('72-7 )--not over 24) ... ... ... ... 27.4 14.8
Scotland ('72-7) ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 20 7.8
Ireland ('72-7) ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 9 3.2
Belgium ('74-5) ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 20.8 ---
Holland ('72-7) ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 22.8 3.7
Sweden ('73-7) ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 19.7 17
Switzerland ('74) ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 6.6 7
Denmark ('74-5) ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 9.9 9.6
----------------------------------------------------------------
More recent figures show that the yearly average in France, for
1876-80, out of 4,374 persons brought to trial, was 1 per cent.
under sixteen years of age, and 17 per cent. between sixteen and
twenty-one; whilst in 1886 the same percentages were .60 and
14. Out of 146,217 accused before the tribunals there were 4 per
cent. under sixteen, and 14 per cent. between sixteen and twenty-
one. Out of 25,135 females there were 4 per cent. under sixteen,
and 11 per cent. between sixteen and twenty-one; whilst in 1886
the percentages were 3 and 14 of males, 2.5 and 14 of females.
In Prussia, of persons accused of crimes and offences in 1860-70,
4 per cent. were under eighteen years.
In Germany, of persons condemned in 1886, 3 per cent. were between
twelve and fifteen, 6 per cent. between fifteen and eighteen, and
16 per cent. between eighteen and twenty-one years.
In Italy, out of 5,189 persons condemned at the assizes in 1887, 3
per cent. were between fourteen and eighteen, and 12 per cent.
between eighteen and twenty-one. Out of 65,624 tried before the
tribunals, 1.2 per cent. were under fourteen, 5 per cent. were
between fourteen and eighteen, and 13 per cent. between eighteen
and twenty-one. There is a continual increase of precocious
criminals in Italy. Prisoners condemned at the assizes under the
age of twenty-one stood at 15 per cent. from 1880 to 1887, whilst
those of a similar age who were tried before the tribunals rose
from 17 to 20 per cent.
To these numerical data may be added others of a qualificative
character, showing that precocity is most frequent in respect of
the natural crimes and offences which are usually observed amongst
born and habitual criminals.
In France the younger prisoners in 1882 had been sentenced in the
following proportions:--
Male. Female.
For murder and poisoning ... ... 0.9 per cent. .5 per cent.
'' homicide, assaults, and wounding 1.6 '' 1.5 ''
'' incendiarism... ... ... ... 1.8 '' 2 ''
'' indecent assault ... ... ... 3.5 '' 11.8 ''
'' specified thefts, forgery, uttering
false coin ... ... ... ... 5.2 '' 2.4 ''
'' simple theft, swindling ... 60.8 '' 49.7 ''
'' mendicity and vagrancy ... 23 '' 20.5 ''
'' other crimes and offences ... 2.7 '' 8 ''
'' defiance of parents ... ... 1 '' 10.5 ''
These figures, showing a greater frequency amongst females of
precocious crimes against the person, and amongst males against
property, are approximately repeated in Switzerland, where young
prisoners in 1870-74 had been sentenced in these proportions:--
For crimes and offences against the person ... 12.1 per cent.
'' '' '' morality ... 5.7 ''
'' incendiarism... ... ... ... ... ... ... 4.3 ''
'' theft ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 65.5 ''
'' swindling ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 5.4 ''
'' forgery ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 1.9 ''
'' vagrancy ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 4.6 ''
The judicial statistics of France and Italy give these
proportions:--
Here we have a statistical demonstration of a more frequent
precocity, amongst various forms of criminality, in respect of
inborn tendencies (murder and homicide, rape, incendiarism,
specific thefts), or in respect of tendencies contracted by habit
(simple theft, mendicity, vagrancy).
Also this characteristic of precocity is accompanied by that of
relapse, which accordingly we have seen to be more frequent in the
same forms of natural criminality, and which we can now tabulate
in respect of its persistency in these born and habitual
criminals.
It has been well said that the large number of relapsed persons
who are brought to trial year after year proves that thieves ply
their trade as a regular calling; the thief who has once tasted
prison life is sure to return to it.[8] And again, there are very
few cases in which a man or a woman who has turned thief ceases to
be one. Whatever the reason may be, as a matter of fact the thief
is rarely or never reformed. When you can turn an old thief into
an honest worker, you may turn an old fox into a house dog.[9]
[8] _Quarterly Review_, 1871, ``The London Police.''
[9] Thomson, ``The Psychology of Criminals,'' _Journal of Mental
Science_, 1870.
We must, however, read these testimonies of practical men, which
could easily be multiplied, in the light of our distinction
between incorrigible criminals, who are so from their birth, and
such as are made incorrigible by the effect of their prison and
social environment. The former could scarcely be reduced in
number, whilst the latter could be considerably diminished
by the penal alternatives of which I will speak later.
The following statistics of relapse are quoted from Yvern
ITALY--Convicted, per cent.
Relapses.
Justices of Tribunals. Assizes.
Peace.
Once ... ... ... ... 57 42 50
Two to five times ... 34 40 40
More than five times ... 9 18 10
--------------------------------------------------------
Actual totals of relapses 27,068 16,240 1,870
I have found from my inquiries amongst 346 condemned to penal
servitude and 353 prisoners from the correctional tribunals the
following percentages:--
Relapsed. Convicts Imprisoned.
Once ... ... 83.2 ... ... 26
Twice ... ... 12.5 ... ... 16.5
3 times ... ... 3.1 ... ... ... 14.6
4 '' ... ... -- ... ... ... 10.8
5 '' ... ... 6.8 ... ... ... 6.6
6 '' ... ... -- ... ... ... 5.2
7 '' ... ... 1.6 ... ... ... 7.1
8 '' ... ... -- ... ... ... 2.8
9 '' ... ... -- ... ... ... 2.8
10 '' ... ... -- ... ... ... 2.3
11 '' ... ... -- ... ... ... .9
12 '' ... ... -- ... ... ... .5
13 '' ... ... -- ... ... ... .9
14 '' ... ... -- ... ... ... 1.4
15 '' ... ... -- ... ... ... .9
20 '' ... ... -- ... ... ... .5
------------------------------------------------
Actual totals of relapses 128 212
Chronic relapse is naturally less frequent in the case of those
condemned to long terms; but it is a conspicuous symptom of
individual and social pathology in the two classes of born and
habitual criminals.
passion are endemic, almost ranking
amongst the customs of the community, like the homicides which
occur in Corsica and Sardinia for the vindication of honour, or
the political assassinations in Russia and Ireland.
The last class is that of occasional criminals, who without any
inborn and active tendency to crime lapse into crime at an early
age through the temptation of their personal condition, and of
their physical and social environment, and who do not lapse into
it, or do not relapse, if these temptations disappear.
Thus they commit those crimes and offences which do not indicate
natural criminality, or else crimes and offences against person or
property, but under personal and social conditions altogether
different from those in which they are committed by born and
habitual criminals.
There is no doubt that, even with the occasional criminal, some of
the causes which lead him into crime belong to the anthropological
class; for external causes would not suffice without individual
predispositions. For instance, during a scarcity or a hard
winter, not all of those who experience privation have recourse to
theft, but some prefer to endure want, however undeserved, without
ceasing to be honest, whilst others are at the utmost driven to
beg their food; and amongst those who yield to the suggestion of
crime, some stop short at simple theft, whilst others go as far as
robbery with violence.
But the true difference between the born and the occasional
criminal is that, with the former, the disaster. Brierre de Boismont
also tells us of a learned man who, at the sight of a picture in a
public gallery, was tempted to cut the canvas, and ran away from
his impulse to crime.
Another characteristic common to the countries under observation
is that, whilst the graver crimes against property show a somewhat
marked diminution, crimes against persons, on the other hand, show
more steadiness, either of regularity, as in France and Belgium,
or of increase, as in England, and still more in Germany. But
this phenomenon in the case of crimes against the person is in
actual correspondence with criminal activity arising from an
increase of population. On the other hand--apart from the
transformation of crimes of violence into crimes of craft and
fraud, due to the increase of movable property--the decrease of
offences against property is no more than the manifest effect of
an artificial change of judicial procedure, summary proceedings
taking the place of trial by jury.
An alternation, which is not invalidated by exceptions here and
there, has been observed in the criminality of different
countries, in the periodic movement of crimes and offences against
property and those against the person, of such a kind that years
of increase in the former usually answer to a diminution in the
latter, and _vice vers_. The principal factors in the annual
increase of theft, such as scarcity and extremes of weather, cause
a corresponding diminution of violent assaults and bodily harm, of
homicides and indecent assaults, and _vice vers_. On the
other hand, offences against property, which are very numerous,
contribute most of all to the total of annual crime; so that the
maximum of 1880 in Italy, as well as in France, Belgium and
Austria, is especially due to the great severity of the
winter of 1879-80, which in Italy coincided with an
agricultural crisis, attested by the very high price of corn.
Whereas from 1881 to 1885 there were very mild winters, with more
abundant harvests, and from 1886 a greater extreme of cold and a
more acute economic crisis.
The general tendency of these periodic oscillations of crime in
Italy, as in other European countries, is nevertheless far more
towards increase than towards decrease. This is also shown by the
proportional triennial averages of crimes and offences placed on
record, and of persons condemned to imprisonment.
In the movement of crime in each country it is necessary to
distinguish special oscillations, more or less prolonged, of
increase or decrease, from its general and permanent tendency.
The latter is determined by the fundamental conditions of each
nation, physical and social, apart from the purely artificial
section of transgressions brought into existence by new laws. The
special oscillations, on the other hand, are determined by the
annual variations in this or that factor of the more numerous
offences; that is to say, by abundance or scantiness of the
harvests, by the annual variations of temperature, by industrial
and political crises, and the like.
The oblivion of this marked distinction, coupled with the
prejudices of the scientific schools, and even of political
parties, leads to some curious disagreements, and to lively
discussions on the results of criminal statistics. For on one
side the champions of the classical school plainly see that the
persistent increase of crimes and offences amounts to a
proof of that breakdown of penal systems, practical and
theoretical, which have hitherto been applied--as was admitted by
Holtzendorff. And on the other hand, the increase of crimes is
denied or affirmed for the purpose of supporting or attacking some
particular ministry. For, in parliaments more than elsewhere,
there is always a deep-seated and vivacious prejudice, a kind of
social artificiality, which causes men to think that the condition
of States, moral and economic, is fundamentally determined far
more by the action of this or that government than by natural
factors, which are mainly superior to and outside of governments
and politicians.
And this is why in Italy there has been much discussion of late,
in scientific publications, at the sittings of the Central
Commission of Judicial Statistics, and even in Parliament, as to
whether crime was increasing or decreasing.
Beltrani-Scalia and Lombroso almost simultaneously called
attention to the growth of Italian crime, and they were succeeded
by various adherents of the positive school, such as Ferri,
Garofalo, Pavia, Pugliese, Guidi, Bournet, Barzilai, and Rossi,
who produced evidence that the general tendency of crime in Italy
was to increase, and that the diminutions observed after 1880 were
mere transitory oscillations; and after 1886 they were justified
by facts.
On the other hand, official returns of criminal statistics, and a
majority of the members of the Central Commission, when pursuing
an inquiry suggested by myself into Italian crime since 1873
--for previously to this date there are no criminal
statistics in Italy except for 1853 and 1869-70--came to the
conclusion that there was a tendency towards a diminution of
crime. But their decision was formed from an entirely partial
standpoint, which they had taken up in the exigency of polemical
discussion. They compared, in fact, the years just concluded,
1881-5, with 1880, and thus it naturally followed that after a
maximum they had a relative decrease. And it was only this
ingenious comparison which gave an appearance of actual proof to
their optimistic assertions; for when a fever is at forty degrees,
the fall of even half a degree is very important. They paid
special attention to the so-called high criminality, which is
tried by the Assize courts, and is actually decreasing, though by
the purely artificial effect of more and more effective measures
of correction. But I have always maintained, and I have the
support of M. Oettingen, that we cannot separate crimes and
offences tried by the Assizes from those tried by the Tribunals,
for there is only a difference of degree between them, as is clear
in regard to theft, assaults and wounding, forgery and the like.
It is a curious fact that similar illusions have existed in all
countries through the same causes and prejudices which have been
mentioned above. In France, for instance, we often find that the
keepers of the seals, reporting on volumes of the excellent and
valuable series of criminal statistics since the year 1826,
occasionally remark on these oscillatory diminutions, and make a
point of treating them as signs of a constant and general
tendency, which succeeding years have always contradicted.
In France also, the same controversy has been kept up since 1840,
with the same polemical artifices as were employed more recently
in Italy, on the question whether crime has increased or
decreased. Dufau, B slight diminution in crimes against
the person, and a large diminution in crime against property.
This is seen in France, England, Belgium, whilst there is an
increase both of crimes and offences in Austria.
Behind the general fact, however, we must distinguish between the
actual and the apparent.
On the one hand, the decrease of more serious crime against
property is simply due to prisoners electing to be sentenced by
the inferior court, which is at the discretion of the Tribunals in
France, but legally established in Belgium, by the laws of 1838
and 1848, and in England by the Acts of 1856 and 1878--an election
of the slighter but more certain punishment of the magistrates in
preference to going before a jury. Indeed, crimes against the
person, in which there is less power of election, do not exhibit
so marked a decrease; and accordingly we see that in Belgium the
increase of ``correctionalised'' crimes is due far more to crimes
against property (62 per cent in 36 years) than to those against
the person (9 per cent.).
On the other hand, the growth of slighter delinquency is partly
the effect of special enactments, which are constantly creating
new infractions, offences or contraventions. For France may be
mentioned the law of 1832 on eluding supervision, that of 1844 on
the game laws, that of 1857 on the false description of goods for
sale, of 1845 on railway offences, of 1849 on the expulsion of
refugees, of 1873 on drunkenness, and of 1874 on requisition of
horses. I dealt with the statistical results of these laws, and
with the influence of the increasing number of police
agents, in my ``Studies on Criminality in France'' (Rome,
1881); and I will here add only a single observation. If it is
true, as M. Joly says, that other laws, passed since 1826, have
extinguished a few offences, or at least have diminished their
frequency under less severe regulations, yet it is also true that
the new infractions created in the past half-century show far
higher numbers than those of the infractions which have been
extinguished or rendered less easy. So that amongst the 297 per
cent. of increase on the offences tried in France between 1826 and
1887, the element due to legal creation of new infractions must
not be ignored.
It cannot, however, be denied that for certain more frequent
offences we have a real and very noteworthy increase, apart from
any legislative or statistical cause of disturbance.
The same observation may be made in regard to England. There also
the increase of 76 per cent, during thirty years of offences tried
summarily is due in part to new infractions, created by special
legislation, and especially by the Education Act of 1873, under
which there were more than forty thousand infractions in 1878, and
more than sixty-five thousand in 1886.
In regard to this delinquency in England (wherein are included,
over and above real offences, certain infractions corresponding to
the police contraventions of the Italian, French, Belgian and
Austrian codes) it is to be observed that the increase of 76 per
cent. in thirty years is due rather to contraventions than to
offences. And this would establish a remarkable difference
between the variations of delinquency in England and in France.
If we analyse the record of infractions tried summarily in
England, we find that contraventions of the law in respect of
drunkenness account for most of this increase (from 82,196 in 1861
to 183,221 in 1885 and 165,139 in 1886). On the other hand,
offences against the person (assaults) and against property
(stealing, larceny, malicious offences) have not shown so large an
increase.
In fact, if we compare the variations in assaults and thefts in
France and England, we have the following figures:--
ENGLAND.
1861-3. 1879-81.
Prisoners tried summarily for assaults ... ... 100 102
Ditto for stealing, larceny, and malicious
offences ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 100 110
FRANCE.
Cases tried by the Tribunals:
For assault and wounding ... ... ... ... ... 100 134
For simple theft ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 100 116
So that in England not only the total delinquency, but more
especially the commoner offences against the person and against
property show a slighter increase than that which has been
established for the same period in France. Whilst we do not
overlook the greater increase of crimes against the person in
England (coinciding, of course, with the doubling of the
population in fifty-five years), this fact seems to me to prove
the salutary influence of English organisations against certain
social factors which lead up to delinquency (such as the care of
foundlings, the guardianship of the poor, and so forth),
notwithstanding the great development of economic activity, which
is assuredly in no way inferior to that of France. The figures
strengthen my conclusions as to the social factors of crime, and
refute the optimistic theory of Poletti.
But the actual participation of each country in the general
increase of crime in Europe is determined by other causes, outside
of the artificial influences of different codes of law. And the
most general and constant of these causes, in all the various
physical and social environments, is the annual increase of
population, which, by adding to the density of the inhabitants of
each country, multiplies their material and legal relations to one
another, and, consequently, the objective and subjective
constituents of crime.
Taking the official Italian figures, which are also relied on by
M. Levasseur, we find, for the periods corresponding to the
variations of criminality, the following rates of increase in the
population of the different countries. Ireland shows a decrease,
owing to emigration.
Increase.
Italy 22,104,789 in 1863--30,947,306 in 1889 40 per cent.
'' 27,165,553 in 1873--30,565,188 in 1888 12 ''
France 31,858,937 in 1826--38,218,903 in 1887 20 per cent.
Belgium 4,072,619 in 1840-- 5,583,278 in 1885 44 ''
Prussia 21,046,984 in 1852--26,614,428 in 1878 26 ''
Germany 45,717,000 in 1882--47,540,000 in 1887 4 ''
England 13,896,797 in 1831--27,870,586 in 1886 101 ''
'' 20,066,224 in 1861--27,870,586 in 1886 39 ''
Austria 20,217,531 in 1869--23,070,688 in 1886 14 ''
Ireland 5,798,967 in 1861-- 4,777,545 in 1888 dec. 17 ''
It must, however, be observed, with regard to this increase of the
population, firstly that it tells as a factor of criminality
only in so far as it is not neutralised, wholly or in part, by
other influences, mainly social, which prevent crime or render it
less grave. Secondly, it is not right merely to compare the
proportional rates of increase in the population with those of
crime, as was done for instance by M. Bodio, who said that in
Italy, from 1873 to 1883, ``since the population had increased by
7.5 per cent., crime might have increased during the same time by
7.5 per cent., without its being fair to say that it had actually
increased.'' In point of fact, as M. Rossi remarked, since in
Italy, and almost all the European States, the growth of the
population is due to the excess of births over deaths (for
emigration is more numerous than immigration), it is evident that,
when we confine our attention to short periods, the addition to
the population, consisting of children under ten or twelve years,
does not increase crime in an appreciable degree. The deaths, on
the other hand, must be subtracted from all stages of human life,
but especially from the number of those who can and do commit
crimes and offences.
Now, as we cannot in this place go into detail, I must confine
myself to the statement of a few characteristic facts, as
illustrated by European crime. Thus we perceive the influence of
the great famine of 1846-7 on crimes against property in France
and Belgium; the rapid oscillations of crime in Ireland,
indicating the unstable political and social conditions of the
country; and the parallel movements of crime in, France and
Prussia. We see, indeed, a constant diminution of crime for the
period between 1860 and 1870, followed (after the
statistical disturbance of the terrible year 1870-1) by a period
of serious and continued increase of crime, resulting from social
and economic conditions, as shown especially by the increase of
vagrancy and theft since 1875.
All these general facts go to prove the close and intimate
connection between crime and the aggregate of its various
constituents. So that, without pursuing more detailed inquiries
into certain social factors of crime, which are capable of
statistical enumeration, such as the increase in the number of the
police, the abundance or scarcity of corn and wine, the spread of
drunkenness, family circumstances, increase of personal
possessions, the facility or otherwise of the settlement of
disputes, commercial and industrial crises, the rate of wages, the
variation from year to year of the general conditions of
existence, and so forth, coincident with the development of
education, encouragements to thrift and the organisation of
charity, we must now proceed to draw from these statistical data
the most important conclusions of criminal sociology.
an undoubted tendency towards increased judicial severity,
which, meanwhile, has not arrested the growth of crime.
PERCENTAGE OF ACQUITTALS IN FRANCE.
Tried in
Assize Courts. Tribunals. Total
1826-30 ... ... 39 .. ... 31 ... ... 32
1831-5 ... ... 42 ... ... 28 ... ... 30
1836-40 ... ... 35 ... ... 22 ... ... 23
1841-5 ... ... 32 ... ... 18 ... ... 19
1846-50 ... ... 36 ... ... 16 ... ... 17
1851-5 ... ... 28 ... ... 12 ... ... 13
1856-60 ... ... 24 ... ... 10 ... ... 7
1861-5 ... ... 24 ... ... 9 ... ... 6
1866 9 ... ... 23 ... ... 17 ... ... 8
1872-6 ... ... 20 ... ... 6 ... ... 6
1877 81 ... ... 23 ... ... 5 ... ... 6
1882-6 ... ... 27 ... ... 6 ... ... 6
PERCENTAGE OF ACQUITTALS IN ENGLAND.
Criminal Proceedings. Summary Proceedings.
1858 62 ... ... ... 25 ... ... ... 34
1863-7 ... ... ... 24 ... ... ... 31
1868-72 ... ... ... 26 ... ... ... 24
1873-7 ... ... ... 25 ... ... ... 21
1878-82 ... ... ... 24 ... ... ... 21
1883-7 ... ... ... 22 ... ... ... 20
Here also it appears that the growth of crime in England, though
less than in France, is not due to the weakening of judicial
severity through the greater number of acquittals. The number
has, in fact, constantly diminished, especially in summary
proceedings, which is just where the greatest increase of crime is
manifest.
Passing now to the other factor of judicial repression, that is to
the percentage of persons sentenced to graver kinds of punishment,
we have to take into account, amongst assize cases in France, the
prisoners logic, to the biological and
physical theory of crime. Whereas it is precisely because I
recognise the influence of social environment, in addition, that
experimental logic convinces me that punishment is not an
efficacious remedy of crime, unless forces are applied beforehand
to neutralise, or at any rate to counteract, the social factors of
crime.
And if this is not a new conclusion, as one of our critics
observes by way of reproach--as though it were not one of the
characteristics of truth to repeat itself persistently, however
much it may be forgotten or even opposed--we must nevertheless
remark that it is now repeated with a mass of new observations and
definite applications, which give it a force unknown to mere
logical deductions.
The classical school has concerned itself simply with mitigation
of punishment as compared with medi family, the
school, associations of men and women, and the history of social
life, that in order to lessen the danger of outbreaks of passion
it is more useful to take them in their origin, and in flank, than
to meet them when they have gathered force.
Bentham relates that in England the delays caused by hard-drinking
couriers, who used to be heavily fined without any good result,
were obviated by combining passenger traffic with the postal
service. Employers of labour secure industry and the most
productive work far more easily by offering a share of the
realised profits than by a system of fines. In the German
universities, academic jealousies and intolerance have been in
great measure overcome by paying the professors in proportion to
the number of their pupils, so that the Faculties find it to their
interest to engage and encourage the best professors, in order to
attract as many students as possible. Thus the activity and zeal
of professors, magistrates, and officials would be stimulated if
their remuneration depended not only on the automatic test of
seniority, but also on the progress displayed by publications,
sentences not reversed, settlements not cancelled, and the like.
It is better to regulate the disturbing restlessness of children
by timely diversions rather than by attempting to repress them in
a manner injurious to their physical and moral health. So in
lunatic asylums and prisons, work is a better means of order and
discipline than chains and castigation. In brief, we obtain more
from men by consulting their self-respect and interests than by
threats and restraint
If the counteraction of punishment must inevitably be opposed to
criminal activity, still it is more conducive to social order to
prevent or diminish this activity by means of an indirect and more
effective force.
In the economic sphere, it has been observed that when a staple
product fails, recourse is had to less esteemed substitutes, in
order to supply the natural wants of mankind. So in the criminal
sphere, as we are convinced by experience that punishments are
almost devoid of deterrent effect, we must have recourse to the
best available substitutes for the purpose of social defence.
These methods of indirect defence I have called _penal
substitutes_. But whereas the food substitutes are as a rule only
secondary products, brought into temporary use, penal substitutes
should become the main instruments of the function of social
defence, for which punishments will come to be secondary means,
albeit permanent. For in this connection we must not forget the
law of criminal saturation, which in every social environment
makes a minimum of crime inevitable, on account of the natural
factors inseparable from individual and social imperfection.
Punishments in one form or another will always be, for this
minimum, the ultimate though not very profitable remedy against
outbreaks of criminal activity.
These penal substitutes, when they have once been established in
the conscience and methods of legislators, through the teaching of
criminal sociology, will be the recognised form of treatment for
the social factors of crime. And they will also be more
possible and practical than that universal social metamorphosis,
direct and uncompromising, insisted on by generous but impatient
reformers, who scorn these substitutes as palliatives because
humanitarian enthusiasm causes them to forget that social
organisms, like animal organisms, can be only partially and
gradually transformed.
The idea of these penal substitutes amounts, in short, to this.
The legislator, observing the origins, conditions, and effects of
individual and collective activity, comes to recognise their
psychological and sociological laws, whereby he will be able to
obtain a mastery over many of the factors of crime, and especially
over the social factors, and thus secure an indirect but more
certain influence over the development of crime. That is to say,
in all legislative, political, economic, administrative, and penal
arrangements, from the greatest institutions to the smallest
details, the social organism will be so adjusted that human
activity, instead of being continually and unprofitably menaced
with repression, will be insensibly directed into non-criminal
channels, leaving free scope for energy and the satisfaction of
individual needs, under conditions least exposed to violent
disturbance or occasions of law-breaking.
It is just this fundamental idea of penal substitutes which shows
how necessary it is that the sociologist and legislator should
have such a preparation in biology and psychology as Mr. Spencer
justly insisted on in his ``Introduction to Social Science.'' And
it is the fundamental idea rather than the substitutes themselves
that we should bear in mind if we would realise their
theoretical and practical value as part of a system of criminal
sociology.
As for the efficacy of any particular penal substitute, I readily
admit, in some sense at least, the partial criticisms which have
been passed upon them. Apart from such as simply say that they do
not believe in the use of alternatives to punishment, and such as
confine themselves to the futile question whether this theory
belongs to criminal science or to police administration, a
majority of criminal sociologists have now definitely accepted the
doctrine of penal substitutes. This theory is accepted, not as an
absolute panacea of crime, but, as I have always stated it, in the
sense of a combination of measures analogous to penal repression;
in place of trusting solely to repression for the defence of
society against crime.
Let us take note of a few examples.
I. _In the Economic Sphere_.--Free Trade (apart from the
temporary necessity of protecting a particular manufacturing or
agricultural industry), by preventing famines and exceptional high
prices of and taxes on food, eliminates many crimes and offences,
especially against property.--Unrestricted emigration is a safety-
valve, especially for a country in which this phenomenon, assuming
large proportions, carries off many persons who are easily driven
to crime by wretchedness, or by their unbalanced energy. Thus the
number of recidivists has diminished in Ireland, not by virtue of
her prison systems, but by emigration, which reached forty-six per
cent. of released prisoners. In Italy, also, there has been a
decrease of crime since 1880, owing to other causes, such
as mild winters and plentiful harvests, but also through a vast
increase of emigration.--Smuggling, which for centuries resisted
extremely harsh punishments, such as amputation of the hand, and
even death, and which still resists prison and the fire-arms of
the revenue officers, is suppressed by the lowering of the import
tariff, as M. Villerm this M.
Mercier replied that if the cause--that is to say,
disproportionate taxes--were not removed, it would be impossible
to prevent the effects.--Immunity from taxation for the minimum
necessary to existence, by preventing distraint, and the
consequent diminution of small properties, which means the
increase of the very poor, will obviate many crimes, as we see
from the agrarian conditions in Ireland. Thus there is a demand
in Italy for the inalienability of small properties, as in America
under the Homestead Exemption Law.--Public works, during famine
and hard winters, check the increase of crimes against property,
the person, and public order. For instance, during the scarcity
of 1853-5 in France, there was no such enormous increase of theft
as during the famine of 1847, simply because the Government set up
vast relief works in the winter months.
The taxes and other indirect restrictions on the production and
sale of alcohol are far more efficacious than our more or less
enormous gaols. The question of pronounced and chronic
drunkenness has increased in gravity, owing to its effect upon the
physical and moral health of the people.
In France the average consumption of wine, estimated at 62 litres
(13.64 gallons) per head in 1829, exceeded 100 litres in 1869; and
in Paris the average of 120 litres in 1819-30, reached 227 litres
in 1881. The average yearly consumption of alcohol in France rose
from .93 in 1829 to 3.24 in 1872, and 3.9 in 1885, the rates in a
few towns being still higher. The total manufacture of alcohol in
France (95 per cent. of which is consumed in the form of
drink) rose from 479,680 hectolitres in 1843 to 1,309,565 in 1879,
and 2,004,000 in 1887. Simultaneously, we have seen that there
was an increase of crimes and offences in France, suicides in
particular having increased from 1,542 in 1829 to 8,202 in 1887.
Moreover I have shown by a special table (_Archivio di
Psichiatria_) that in France, despite a certain inevitable
variation from year to year, there is a manifest correspondence of
increase and decrease between the number of homicides, assaults,
and malicious wounding, and the more or less abundant vintage,
especially in the years of extraordinary variations, whether of
failure of the vintage (1853-5, 1859, 1867, 1873, 1878-80),
attended by a remarkable diminution of crime (assaults and
wounding), or of abundant vintages (1850, 1856-8, 1862-3, 1865,
1868, 1874-5) attended by an increase of crime.
I was also the first to show that in the vintage months there is
an increase of occasional crimes and offences against the person,
owing to that connection between drink and crime which had already
been remarked upon by M. Pierquin amongst others, and illustrated
by the newspaper reporters on the days which follow Sundays and
holidays.
But apart from their natural variation, the connection between
drink and crime is definitely established. Every day we have the
confirmation of Morel's statement, that ``alcoholism has produced
a demoralised and brutalised class of wretched beings,
characterised by an early depravation of instincts, and by
indulgence in the most immoral and dangerous actions.'' It is
useless to quote again in this place the data of psycho-
pathology and legal medicine, or those of prison statistics
relating to imprisoned drunkards, or to tavern brawls as the
proved causes of crime.
Nevertheless it is a fact that the relation of cause and effect
between drink and crime has recently been denied, with the aid of
arguments based upon statistics. M. Tammeo opened the discussion
by observing that the countries of Europe and the provinces of
Italy distinguished by the largest consumption of alcohol, show
lower ratios under the worst crimes of violence. He gave to his
remark a relative and limited value, for he only denied that the
abuse of liquor was the most active cause of crime. After him M.
Fournier de Flaix, maintaining the same proposition with the same
statistical arguments, and admitting that ``alcohol is a special
scourge for the individual who indulges in it,'' yet concluded
that ``alcoholism is not a scourge which menaces the European
race.'' And he repeated that the nations which consumed the
greatest quantity of alcohol show a slighter frequency of crime,
especially against the person. Lastly M. Colajanni enlarged upon
the same proposition, using the statistical data so fully set out
by M. Kummer, and drew a still more positive conclusion, that
``there is a lack of constancy, regularity, and universality in
the relations, coincidence, and sequence, as between alcoholism
and crime and suicide; so that it is impossible to establish any
statistical relation of cause and effect between these
phenomena.''
Passing over the grave errors of fact in M. Colajanni's brochure,
I will only observe that this pro position is a pure
misapprehension of statistical logic.
If we once admit (and unfortunately it cannot be denied) the bad
influence of alcohol on bodily and mental health, in the form of
spirits as well as of wine--as to which it is not correct to say
that the southern departments are not consumers of alcohol--it
cannot be maintained that alcohol, which is physically and morally
injurious to individuals, is not hurtful to nations, which are but
aggregates of individuals.
There is an easy answer to the statistical arguments. (1) A
symmetrical and continuous agreement of figures is never found in
any collection of statistics, for in all that concerns a society
the intervention of individual, physical, and social causes is
inevitable. (2) A negative conclusion from these partial and
natural disagreements (for it is especially true in biology and
sociology that every rule has its exceptions, due to intervening
causes) would only be justified if it had been maintained that
alcoholism is the sole and exclusive cause of crime. But as this
has never been asserted by anybody, all the statistical arguments
of Fournier and Colajanni are based on a misapprehension. And
unfortunately they do not destroy the link of causality between
drink and crime. This connection is occasional, in assaults,
wounding, and homicide in acute alcoholism. It is habitual, in
the case of chronic alcoholism, as in crimes against property, the
person, morality, and public officers. And this in spite of the
relatively low figures, though lower than the facts warrant,
con tained in the general statements, apart from special and
scientific inquiries into alcoholism as a direct and manifest
cause of crime and suicide.
I wrote as early as 1881 that alcoholism, prior to its becoming a
cause, is the effect of wretched social conditions in the poorer
classes; and that to the one-sided simplicity of economic causes
it is necessary to add certain bio-psychical conditions and
conditions of physical environment, which go far to determine the
geographical distribution of spirit-alcoholism (chronic and more
serious, in northern countries and provinces) and wine-alcoholism
(acute and less deep-seated, in the countries and provinces of the
south).
It was therefore natural that indirect measures against alcoholism
should have been resorted to long ago, such as the raising of the
tax on alcoholic drinks, and the lowering of that on wholesome
beverages, such as coffee, tea, and beer; strict limitation of the
number of licenses; increased responsibility of license-holders
before the law, as in America; the expulsion of tipsy members from
workmen's societies; the provision of cheap and wholesome
amusements; the testing of wines and spirits for adulteration;
better organised and combined temperance societies; the
circulation of tracts on the injurious effects of alcohol; the
abolition of certain festivals which tended rather to
demoralisation than to health; discouragement of the custom of
paying wages on Saturday; the establishment of voluntary
temperance homes, as in America, England, and Switzerland.
North America, England, Sweden and Norway, France, Belgium,
Holland, and Switzerland have applied remedies against drunkenness
(to the length of a State monopoly of drink in Switzerland); but
with too much zeal for public revenue, and, under the pretext of
public health, almost exclusively framed with a view to duties on
manufacture, distribution, and consumption. Yet these duties are
quite inadequate by themselves, and may even tend to the injury of
the physical and moral health of the nation, the increase of
price, leading to frauds and adulteration.
Penal laws against drunkenness, naturally resorted to in all
countries, are far from being effectual. There is so far no
system of direct and indirect measures against alcoholism, duly
co-ordinated, beyond taxation and punishment. And we perceive, as
for instance in France, in spite of the repressive law introduced
by my distinguished friend Senator Roussel (January, 1873), and in
spite of the extremely high duties, which were doubled in 1872 and
1880, that alcoholism persists with a terrible and fatal increase.
So it is, more or less, in every country still, in spite of duties
and punishments.
The irregularity of wages, and the deceitful vigour imparted by
the first recourse to alcohol, the poverty and excessive toil of
the working classes, insufficiency of food, inherited habits, and
the lack of efficacious preventive measures, are influences which
prevent the working man from resisting this scourge; and no fiscal
or repressive law, acting solely by direct compulsion, will ever
be able to paralyse these natural tendencies, which can only be
weakened by indirect measures. On the other hand, when we
remember that habitual intoxication, so common in medi bankruptcies, forgeries,
frauds, &c., which result therefrom.--The adjustment of salaries
to the needs of public officials, and to general economic
conditions, stems the tide of corruption and embezzlement, which
were partly due to their concealed poverty.--Limited hours of duty
for the responsible services on which the safety of the public
depends, as for instance in railway stations, are far more
serviceable in preventing accidents than the useless punishment of
those who are guilty of manslaughter.--High-roads, railways, and
tramways disperse predatory bands in rural districts, just as wide
streets and large and airy dwellings, with public lighting and the
destruction of slums, prevent robbery with violence, concealment
of stolen goods, and indecent assaults.--Inspection of workshops
and shorter hours for children's labour, with their
superintendence of married women, may be a check on indecent
assaults, which penal servitude does not prevent.--Cheap workmen's
dwellings, and general sanitary measures for houses both in urban
and rural districts, care being taken not to crowd them with poor
families, tend to physical health, as well as to prevent many
forms of immorality.--Co-operative and mutual societies, provident
societies and insurance against old age, funds for sick and infirm
workmen, employers' liability for accidents during work, from
machinery or otherwise; popular savings' banks, charity
organisation societies and the like, obviate a large number of
offences against property and the person much better than a penal
code.--I have maintained in the Italian Parliament that the reform
of religious charities, which in Italy represent funds to
the amount of two milliards, might lead to the prevention of
crime.--Measures for the discouragement of mendicity and vagrancy,
above all agricultural colonies, as in Holland, Belgium, Germany,
and Austria, would be the best penal substitute for the very
frequent offences committed by vagabonds. Thus it may be
concluded that a prudent social legislation, not stopping short at
mere superficial and perfunctory reforms, might constitute a
genuine code of penal substitutes, which could be set against the
mass of criminal impulses engendered by the wretched conditions of
the most numerous classes of society.
respect for the rights of
individuals and associations, far better than by policemen and
prisons.--Electoral reform adapted to the condition of a country
is the only remedy against electoral offences.--Similarly, in
addition to the economic reforms already indicated, political and
parliamentary reforms are much more serviceable than the penal
code in preventing many offences of a social and political type,
provided that a more real harmony has been established between a
country and its lawful representation, and that the latter is
freed from the occasions and the forms which lead to its abuse, by
removing technical questions from injurious political influences,
and giving the people a more direct authority over public affairs,
including the _referendum_.--Finally, that great mass of crimes,
isolated or epidemic, evolved by unsatisfied needs and the neglect
of separate divisions of a country, which differ in climate, race,
traditions, language, customs, and interests, would be largely
eliminated if we were to dispense with the vague folly of
political symmetry and bureaucratic centralisation, and in their
place to adapt the laws to the special features of the respective
localities. National unity in no way depends upon legislative and
administrative uniformity, which is merely its unhealthy
exaggeration. It is indeed inevitable that laws, which in our day
merely represent a mode of contact between the most varied moral,
social and economic conditions of different localities, should
always be inadequate to social needs--too restricted and slow in
action for one part of the country, too sweeping and premature for
another part, just as the average convict's garb is too
long for those who are short, and too short for those who are
tall. Administrative federation with political unity (_e pluribus
unum_) would furnish us with an aggregate of penal substitutes,
restoring to each part of the social organism that freedom of
movement and development which is a universal law of biology and
sociology--for an organism is but a federation too lightly
appreciated by the advocates of an artificial uniformity, such as
ends by conflicting with unity itself.
III. _In the Scientific Sphere_.--The development of science,
which creates fresh instruments of crime, such as fire-arms, the
press, photography, lithography, new poisons, dynamite,
electricity, hypnotism, and so forth, sooner or later provides the
antidote also, which is more efficacious than penal repression.--
The press, anthropometric photography of prisoners, telegraphy,
railways, are powerful auxiliaries against crime.--Dissection and
the progress of toxicology have decreased the number of poisoning
cases; and experience has already proved that ``Marsh's
preparation'' has rendered poisoning by arsenic, once so common,
comparatively rare.--A similar process has recently been suggested
as a means of detection in cases of forgery, for when documents
are exposed to iodine vapour, effaced or altered writing is
restored.--Women doctors will diminish the opportunities of
immorality.--The free expression of opinion will do more to
prevent its possible dangers than trials of a more or less
scandalous kind.--Piracy, which was not extirpated by
punishments which are now obsolete, is disappearing under the
effects of steam navigation.--The spread of Malthusian ideas
prevents abortion and infanticides.[15]--Systematic bookkeeping,
by its clearness and simplicity, obviates many frauds and
embezzlements, which were encouraged by the old complicated
methods.--Cheques, by avoiding the necessity of frequent
conveyance of money, do more to prevent theft than punishments can
do.--The credentials given by some banks to their clerks, whose
duty it is to witness the signature of the actual debtor, prevent
the falsification of bills.--Certain bankers have adopted the
practice of taking an instantaneous photograph of every one
presenting cheques for large amounts.--Safes, bolts, and alarm-
bells, are a great security against thieves. --As a
preventive of murder in railway carriages, it has been found that
alarm signals and methods of securing the carriage-doors from the
inside, are more effectual than penal codes.
as much a social obligation as penal
responsibility, and not a mere private concern.--Simplification of
the law would prevent a large number of frauds, contraventions,
&c., for, apart from the metaphysical and ironical assertion that
ignorance of the law excuses no man, it is certain that our forest
of codes, laws, decrees, regulations and so forth, leads to
endless misapprehensions and mistakes, and therefore to
contraventions and offences.--Commercial laws on the civil
responsibility of directors, on bankruptcy proceedings and the
registration of shareholders, on bankrupts' discharges, on
industrial and other exchanges, would do more than penal servitude
to prevent fraudulent bankruptcy.--Courts of honour, recognised
and regulated by law, would obviate duels without having recourse
to more or less serious punishments.--A well organised system of
conveyancing checks forgery and fraud, just as registration
offices have almost abolished the palming and repudiation of
children, which were so common in medi lying-in hospitals and home attendance for young
mothers, might do much to prevent infanticide and abortion, which
are not checked by the severest punishment.--Prisoners' aid
societies, especially for the young, might be useful as penal
substitutes, although much less so than is generally alleged, with
plenty of eloquence and little practical work. There is always
this strong objection to them, that we ought to succour workmen
who continue honest in spite of their wretchedness before those
who have been in prison; and again, in place of bestowing
patronage on released prisoners without distinction, many of whom
are incorrigible, we ought to select the occasional criminals and
criminals of passion, who alone are capable of amendment; and
assisting them we should avoid anything like police formalities.
As a matter of fact it appears that, even in England, where these
societies are most active, their intervention, like all direct
charity, is too far below the needs of those for whom provision is
necessary.
V. _In the Sphere of Education_.--It has been proved that mere
book education, whilst it is useful in rendering certain gross
frauds more difficult, in extending a knowledge of the laws, and
above all in diminishing improvidence, so characteristic of the
occasional criminal, is far from being the panacea of crime which
people imagined when they found in the criminal statistics a large
proportion of illiterate prisoners. It must also be said that
schools which are not closely inspected are frequently hotbeds of
immorality. It is necessary, therefore, to rely on the influence
of a wider education, limited though this may be in its
turn. I do not mean a mechanical instruction in moral maxims,
appealing to the intelligence without reaching the feelings, but
rather of the examples afforded by every kind of social
institution, by the government and the press, by the school of the
stage and of public entertainments.--It would be well, however, to
abolish certain vulgar and sensual entertainments, and to
substitute for them wholesome amusements and exercises, public
baths, properly superintended, and so built as to render private
meetings impossible, cheap theatres, and so forth. Thus the
prohibition of cruel spectacles, and the suppression of gambling
houses, are excellent penal substitutes.--The experimental method
in the teaching of children, which applies the laws of physio-
psychology, according to the physical and moral type of each
pupil, and by giving him less of archaology, and more knowledge
serviceable in actual life, by the mental discipline of the
natural sciences, which alone can develop in him a sense of the
actual, such as our classical schools only enfeeble, would adapt
men better for the struggle of existence, whilst diminishing the
number of those left without occupation, who are the candidates of
crime.--Many of the causes of crime would be nipped in the bud by
checking degeneration through physical education of the young, as
well as by preventing demoralisation by means of the education of
abandoned children, at such institutions as the workhouse, ragged
and industrial schools, so well developed in England--or, still
better, by the boarding out of children, so as to avoid over-
crowding.--One class of inducements to crime would be
eliminated by restrictions imposed on scandalous publications
which concern themselves exclusively with crime, having no other
object than to trade upon the most brutal passions, and which are
allowed to exist under an abstract conception of liberty, save
that the responsible conductors are punished when the evil has
been done.--Similarly there ought to be some restriction upon the
right of admission to police-courts and assizes, where our women
hustle each other as the Roman women of the decline scrambled to
be present at the imperial circus-shows, and where our young men
and our hardened criminals receive lessons in the art of
committing crimes with greater smartness and precaution.
The instances which I have given, and which might be multiplied
into a preventive code as long as the penal code, prove to
demonstration how large a part is played by social factors in the
genesis of crime, and especially of occasional crime. But they
prove still more clearly that the legislator, by modifying these
causes, can influence the development of crime within limits
imposed by the competition of other anthropological and physical
factors. Quetelet was right, therefore, when he said in this
connection, ``Since the crimes committed every year seem to be the
necessity of our social organisation, and their number cannot be
diminished if the causes to which they are due cannot be modified
in a preventive sense, it behoves legislators to recognise these
causes, and to eliminate them as far as possible. They must frame
the budget of crime as they frame that of the national
revenue and expenditure.''
It must nevertheless be borne in mind that all this will have to
be done apart from the penal code; for it is true, however
strange, that history, statistics, and direct observation of
criminal phenomena prove that penal laws are the least effectual
in preventing crime, whilst the strongest influence is exercised
by laws of the economic, political, and administrative order.
In conclusion, the legislator should be convinced by the teaching
of scientific observation that social reforms are much more
serviceable than the penal code in preventing an inundation of
crime. The legislator, on whom it devolves to preserve the health
of the social organism, ought to imitate the physician, who
preserves the health of the individual by the aid of experimental
science, resorts as little as possible, and only in extreme cases,
to the more forcible methods of surgery, has a limited confidence
in the problematic efficiency of medicines, and relies rather on
the trustworthy processes of hygienic science. Only then will he
be able to avoid the dangerous fallacy, ever popular and full of
life, which Signor Vacca, Keeper of the Seals, expressed in these
words: ``The less we have recourse to preventive measures, the
more severe ought our repression to be.'' Which is like saying
that when a convalescent has no soup to pick up his strength, we
ought to administer a drastic drug.
It is precisely on this point that the practical, rather than the
merely theoretical, differences between the positive and the
classical schools of penal law become evident. Whilst we believe
that social reforms and other measures suggested by a study
of the natural factors of crime are most effective in preventing
crime, legislators, employing the _a{sic} priori_ method of the
classical school, have for many years past been discussing
proposed penal codes, whilst they permit criminality to make
steady progress. It is another case of _Dum Rom the experimental observations and physio-pathology on the
causes of disease, especially of epidemic and infectious diseases,
together with the discoveries of M. Pasteur, who created
bacteriology; so social hygiene as against crime was only possible
as a theory, and will not be so as a practice, till the diffusion
of the facts of biology and criminal sociology relating to the
natural causes of crime, especially of occasional crime.
The great thing is to be convinced that, for social defence
against crime, as for the moral elevation of the masses of men,
the least measure of progress with reforms which prevent crime is
a hundred times more useful and profitable than the publication of
an entire penal code.
When a minister introduces a law, for instance, on railways,
customs duties, wages, taxation, companies, civil or commercial
institutions, there are few who think of the effect which these
laws will have on the criminality of the nation, for it is
imagined that sufficient has been done in this respect by means of
reforms in the penal code. In the social organism, on the other
hand, as in individuals, there is an inevitable solidarity, though
frequently concealed, between the most distant and different
parts.
It is just from these laws of social physiology and pathology that
we derive the notion of penal substitutes, which at the same time
we must not dissociate from the law of criminal saturation. For
if it is true that by modifying the social factors we can produce
an effect on the development of crime, and especially of
occasional crime, it is also true, unfortunately, that in every
social environment there is always a minimum of inevitable
criminality, due to the influence of the other factors, biological
and physical. Otherwise we might easily fall into the opposite
and equally fallacious illusion of thinking that we could
absolutely suppress all crimes and offences. For it is easy to
reach on one side the empiric idea of penal terrorism, and on the
other side the hasty and one-sided conclusion that to abolish some
particular institution would get rid of its abuses. The fact is
that we must consider before all things whether it is not a less
evil to put up with institutions, however inconvenient, and to
reform them, than to forfeit all the advantages which they afford.
And it must above all be borne in mind that as society cannot
exist without law, so law cannot exist without offences against
the law. The struggle for existence may be fought by honest or
economic activity, or by dishonest and criminal activity. The
whole problem is to reduce to a minimum the more or less criminal
rufflings and shocks, yet without disturbing ``social order,''
amidst the indifference or servility of a spiritless people, or
resorting to policemen and prisons on every slight occasion.
These general observations on penal substitutes in connection with
the law of criminal saturation are a sufficient answer to the two
chief objections raised even by such as agree with me in theory.
It has been urged, in effect, that some of the penal substitutes
which I have enumerated have already been applied, without
preventing crime; and again, that there were some institutions
which it would be absurd to abolish because the removal of a
prohibition would also remove the contravention.
The aim of penal substitutes is not to render all crimes and
offences impossible, but only to reduce them to the least possible
number in any particular physical and social environment. There
are crimes of piracy to this day, but the use of steam in
navigation has, none the less, been more effectual than all the
penal codes. Murders still occur, though very rarely, on the
railways; but it is none the less true that the substitution of
the railways and tramways for the old diligences and stage coaches
has decimated highway robberies, with or without murder. Divorce
does not eliminate wife-murder as a consequence of adultery, but
it diminishes its frequency. Similarly, after the protection
which is afforded to abandoned children, we shall not be able to
close the tribunals through the absence of crimes and offences,
but it is certain that the supply of these will be notably
diminished.
As for the second objection, I was careful to say, in regard to
existing institutions, that we must naturally consider whether the
evil arising from violating them or that which would be due to
their suppression is the greater. But my main contention is that
by reforming these institutions we can do more to prevent crime
than by leaving them as they happen to be, or at most granting
them the fallacious protection of one or two articles in the penal
code.
I will myself add a criticism of the theory of penal substitutes,
and it is that they are difficult of application. We have only to
think of the immense force of inertia in the habits, traditions
and interests which have to be overcome before we can secure the
appli cation, not of all, but of any one of the penal
substitutes which I have enumerated. And some of these are not
simple, or based on a single principle, but comprise an assemblage
of co-ordinated reforms, like the prevention of drunkenness, the
protection of abandoned children, the accessibility of justice,
and so forth.
But if legislators must take into account the actual conditions of
the people, and adapt themselves to conditions of time and place,
it is the business of science to indicate the goal, however
distant and difficult to reach. The first condition of attaining
legislative and social reforms is that they should impress
themselves beforehand on the public conscience; and this is not
possible if science, in spite of transitory difficulties, does not
resolutely open up the road which has to be travelled, without any
compromise with eclecticism, which means for science what
hybridism means for organic life.
Two other objections may be made on the ground of principle to
what has been said. The first is that this system of penal
substitutes is only the familiar process of prevention of crime.
The second is that the criminal expert need not concern himself
with it, since prevention is only a question of good government,
which has nothing to do with the study of crimes and punishments.
My answer to the second objection is that the importance of taking
measures to prevent crime has certainly been dwelt upon,
especially from the time of Montesquieu and Beccaria, but it has
been only by way of platonic and isolated declaration, with
no such systematic development as might have given them practical
application, based on experimental observations. Moreover, this
prevention has always been held as subsidiary to repression,
whereas we have arrived at the positive conclusion that
prevention, instead of being a mere secondary aid, should
henceforth become the primary defensive function of society, since
repression has but an infinitesimal influence upon criminality.
Furthermore, it is important to observe the profound distinction
between ordinary prevention and penal substitutes; or in other
words, between prevention by police and prevention by society.
The former merely seeks to prevent crime when its germ is already
developed and active, and it nearly always employs methods of
direct coercion, which, being themselves repressive in their
character, are often inefficacious, even if they do not provoke
additional offences. Social prevention, on the other hand, begins
with the original sources of crime, attacking its biological,
physical, and social factors, by methods which are wholly
indirect, and which rest upon the free play of psychological and
sociological laws.
Science, as well as the making of laws, has hitherto been too much
influenced by a preference for repression, or at least for
administrative police prevention. ``There have been authoritative
works and learned folios,'' says Ellero, ``which dealt not only
with punishment, but also with torture; there has been none
dealing with the provision of means for providing an alternative
to punishment.''
really penal
substitutes in a clumsy and unscientific manner.
We have thus studied the data of criminal statistics in their
theoretical and practical relations with criminal sociology, and
come to the conclusion that, since crime is a natural phenomenon,
determined by factors of three kinds, it answers on that account
to a law of criminal saturation, whereby the physical and social
environment, aided by individual tendencies, hereditary or
acquired, and by occasional impulses, necessarily determine the
extent of crime in every age and country, both in quantity and
quality. That is to say, the criminality of a nation is
influenced in the natural sphere by the bio-psychical conditions
of individuals and their physical environment, and, in the social
sphere, by economic, political, administrative and civil
conditions of laws, far more than by the penal code.
Nevertheless the execution of punishment, though it is the less
important part of the function of social defence, which should be
carried out in harmony with the other functions of society, is
always the last and inevitable auxiliary.
And this entirely agrees with the universal law of evolution, in
virtue of which, amidst the variation of animal and social
organisms, antecedent forms are not wholly eliminated, but
continue as the basis of the forms which succeed them. So that if
the future evolution of the social administration of defence
against crime is to consist in the development of the primitive
forms of direct physical coercion into the higher forms of
indirect psychical discipline of human activity, this will
not imply that the primitive forms must entirely disappear,
especially for the gravest crimes, which, in the biological and
psychological conditions of those who commit them, take us back to
the primitive epochs and forms of individual and social violence.
I end with a modification of an old comparison which has been much
abused. Crime has been compared to an impetuous torrent which
ought to be enclosed between the dykes of punishment, lest
civilised society should be submerged. I do not deny that
punishments are the dykes of crime, but I assert that they are
dykes of no great strength or utility. All nations know by sad
and chronic experience that their dykes cannot save them from
inundations; and so our statistics teach us that punishments have
but an infinitesimal power against the force of criminality, when
its germs are fully developed.
But as we can best protect ourselves against inundations by
obeying the laws of hydrostatics and hydrodynamics, by timbering
the banks near the source of the stream, and by due rectilineation
or excavation along its course and near its mouth, so, in order to
defend ourselves against crimes, it is best to observe the laws of
psychology and sociology, and to avail ourselves of social
substitutes, which are far more efficacious than whole arsenals of
repressive measures.
own
conduct, or their previous relapse, or their habitual criminality.
The third proposition of the positive school in regard to
individual guarantees, which was also advanced by M. Puglia, is
connected with reform of the penal code, and especially with the
more effectual indemnification of the victims of crime. The
object is to prune the long and constantly increasing list of
crimes, offences, and contraventions of all acts which result in
slight injury, committed by occasional offenders, or ``pseudo-
criminals''--that is, by normal persons acting merely with
negligence or imprudence.
In these cases the personal and social injury is not caused
maliciously, and the agent is not dangerous, so that imprisonment
is more than ever inappropriate, unjust, and even dangerous in its
consequences. Deeds of this kind ought to be eliminated from the
penal code, and to be regarded merely as civil offences, as
maier evidence the unveiling of his monument at Lucca):--``I
expressed my opinion as to the jury in 1841, in an article
published in the _Annals of Tuscan Jurisprudence_--namely, that
criminal justice was becoming a lottery. Justice is being
deprived of her scales and provided with a dice-box. This seems
to me to be the capital defect of the jury. All other defects
might be eliminated by a good law, but this one is inseparable
from the jury. . . . Even amongst magistrates we may find the
harsh and the clement; but in the main they judge according to
legal argument, and one can always more or less foresee the issue
of a trial{.??} But with juries all forecast is rash and
deceptive. They decide by sentiment; and what is there more vague
and fickle than sentiment{. .??} . . With juries, craft is more
serviceable to an advocate than knowledge. I once had to defend a
husband who had killed his wife's lover in a caf known to the Republic of Athens and Rome, but it was
developed in the Middle Ages by the ``barbarians,'' as an
instrument which helped the people to escape from tyranny in the
administration of the law. It used to be said that the jury made
a reality of popular sovereignty, and substituted the common sense
and good will of the people for the cold dogmatism of the lawyers,
penetrated as they were by class prejudices. From this point of
view the jury was too much in accord with the general tendency of
the ideas of the day not to be greedily adopted. It was another
example of the close connection between philosophic ideas,
political institutions, and the judicial organisation.
The jury, transported to the Continent, in spite of the
improvements recorded by Bergasse in his report to the Constituent
Assembly, on August 14, 1789, was a mere counterfeit of that which
it was, and is, in England. But its political character is still
so attractive that it has many supporters to this day, though the
results of its employment in various countries are not very happy.
Yet, as the jury is a legal institution, we must consider its
advantages and defects, both from the political and from the legal
point of view, and accept the conclusion forced upon us by the
predominance of one or the other.
From the political standpoint, it is unquestionable that the jury
is a concession to popular sovereignty; for it is admitted that
the power of the law not only originates with the people, but is
also directly exercised by them.
The jury may also be a guarantee of civic and political liberties
as against the abuses of government, which are far more easy with
a small number of judges, more or less subordinate to the
government.
Again, the jury may be a means of affirming the sentiment of
equality amongst citizens, each of whom may to-morrow become a
judge of his equals, and of spreading political education, with a
practical knowledge of the law. It is true that, with this
knowledge of the law, juries also learn the details of every kind
of crime, without the equally constant evidence of virtuous
actions; and there is here a danger of moral contagion from crime.
But, from the political point of view, it is certain that the jury
may awaken, with a knowledge of the law, a consciousness of civic
duties, which are too frequently undertaken as a forced and
troublesome burden.
On these political advantages of the jury, however, a few remarks
may be made.
In the first place, the concession to popular sovereignty is
reduced to very small proportions by the limitations of the jury
list, and of the functions of the jury, which legislation in every
country is compelled to impose.
The essential characteristic distinguishing the jury from the
judge is especially marked by the origin of their authority; for
the jury is a judge simply because he is a citizen, whilst the
magistrate is a judge only by popular election or appointment by
the head of the State. So that any one who has entered on his
civil and political rights, and is of the necessary age,
ought, according to the spirit of the institution, to
administer justice on every civil or criminal question, whatever
its importance, and not only in giving the final verdict, but also
in conducting the trial. Yet not only is the ancient trial by
popular assemblies impossible in the great States of our day, but
also faith in the omniscience of the people has not availed to
prevent all kinds of limitations in the principle of the jury.
Thus the political principle of the jury is such that it cannot be
realised without misapprehension, limitation, and depreciation.
In fact, even in England, where the jury can of its own motion
declare in the verdict its opinions, strictures, and suggestions
of reform, as arising out of the trial, it is always subject to
the guidance of the judge, and it is not employed in the less
serious and most numerous cases, on which the whole decision is
left to magistrates, who apparently are not to be trusted to
decide upon crimes of a graver kind.
And as for the other political advantages of the jury, experience
shows us that the jury is often more injurious than serviceable to
liberty.
In the first place, in continental States the jury is but an
institution artificially grafted, by a stroke of the pen, on the
organism of the law, and has no vital connection or common roots
with this and other social organisms, as it has in England. Also
the example of classical antiquity is opposed to the institution
of the jury, which has been imposed upon us by eager imitation and
political symmetry; for if the jury had disappeared amongst
continental nations, this simply means that it did not find in the
ethnic types, the manners and customs, the physical and
social environments of these nations, an adequate supply of
vitality, such as it has retained, for instance through so many
historical changes, amongst the Anglo-Saxons.
And if sometimes the jury can withstand the abuses of government,
still too frequently it does not withstand its own passions, or
the influence of the social class (the _bourgeoisie_ in our own
day), to which nearly all juries belong. It is notorious, in
fact, that the jury is more rigorous in regard to prisoners
accused of crimes against property than in regard to those accused
of crimes against the person, especially crimes instigated by
personal motives such as hate, vengeance, or the like; for every
juryman thinks that he himself might be a victim of the exploits
of a thief, or the attacks of a murderer for the sake of gain;
whereas there is less reason to fear a murder provoked by
vengeance, an outrage, an embezzlement of public money, or the
like. And Macchiavelli said that men would rather have blood
drawn from their veins than money from their pockets.
Besides, the same jury which will resist pressure from the
Government does not resist popular pressure, direct or indirect,
especially in view of the secrecy of their individual votes. No
doubt there are noble exceptions; but society is made up of
average virtues, and only upon them can it count.[17]
of
Jouffroy, that the jury is an outpost of liberty, or in those of
Carrara, that it is its necessary complement, we have to remark
that this would be true if the jury were instituted by a despotic
government; but when popular liberties have far more effectual
guarantees in the political organisation of the State, then this
quality of the jury is more apparent than real.
In fine, either the government is despotic, and then juries are
not strong enough to preserve liberty, as in England from the time
of Henry VIII. to that of James II.; or, as Mittermaier said,
``when authority is corrupt, and the judge is cowardly or
terrorised, a jury cannot assist in the defence of liberty.'' Or
else the government is liberal, and then the judges also are
independent, so that there is no need of juries, especially with
the guarantees of their independence which I have already
indicated.
Now history reminds us that the jury is never instituted by
despotic governments. It was refused, for instance, in upper
Italy by Napoleon in 1815, in Naples by the Bourbons in 1820, in
Lombardy by Austria in 1849, and in our own day in Russia, for
political crimes, though it is allowed for ordinary crimes.
Thus the jury, as a political and liberal institution, is oddly
destined to be excluded when it would be serviceable, and to be
useless when it is admitted. It reminds us of the destiny of the
National Guard.
But, even in England, the jury is regarded as especially a legal
institution; and the main qualities attributed to it in this
connection are moral judgment and private conviction.
The law, we are told, has always a certain harshness and
insufficiency, for it ought to provide for the future whilst
grounding itself on the past, whereas it cannot foresee all
possible cases. Progress is so rapid and manifold, in modern
society, that penal laws cannot keep pace with it, even though
they are frequently recast--as for instance in Bavaria, which in
one century has had three penal codes, and in France, where an
almost daily accumulation of special laws is piled upon the
original text of the most ancient code in Europe.
The jury, by its moral judgment, corresponding in some degree to
the equity of the ancients, is able to correct the _summum jus_
with verdicts superior to the written law. And, in addition, the
jury always follows its private conviction, the inspiration of
sentiment, the voice of the conscience, pure instinct, in place of
the stern and artificial maxims of the trained lawyer.
I do not deny these qualities of the jury; but I very much suspect
that they are serious and dangerous vices rather than useful
qualities in a legal institution.
In the first place, I believe that the distinction of powers or
social functions, corresponding to the natural law of division of
labour, ought not to be destroyed by the jury. The duty of the
judicial power, before everything else, is to observe and apply
the written law; for if we once admit the possibility that the
judge (popular or trained) has to amend the law, all guarantee of
liberty is lost, and the authority of the individual is unlimited.
As I have said above, we allow the authority of the judge
only when we have actual guarantees of his capacity and
independence, and always within the limits of the general precepts
of the law, and under the control of a superior disciplinary
power.
But the omnipotence of the jury, liberated from all reasonable
regulation, with no directing motives for its verdict, and no
possibility of control, is a two-edged blade, which may sometimes
improve upon the law, or at least usefully indicate to the
legislator the tendencies of public opinion in regard to a
particular crime. But it may also violate the law, and the
liberty of the individual, and then we pay too dear for the slight
advantage which the jury can confer, and which might be replaced
by other manifestations of public opinion. In any case, as
Bentham said, it is better to have our remedy in the law than in
the subversion of the law.
As for private conviction, we willingly admit that no system of
legal proof is acceptable. But it is one thing to substitute for
the legal and artificial assurance of the law the assurance of the
judge who tries the case, and quite another thing to substitute
for conviction founded on argument, and for a critical examination
of the evidence collected during the trial, the blind and simple
promptings of instinct or sentiment.
Even apart from technical notions, which we consider necessary to
the physio-psychological trial of any accused person, social
justice certainly cannot be dispensed through the momentary and
unconsidered impressions of a casual juryman. If a criminal trial
consisted of the simple declaration that a particular
action was good or bad, no doubt the moral consciousness of the
individual would be sufficient; but since it is a question of the
value of evidence and the examination of objective and subjective
facts, moral consciousness does not suffice, and everything should
be submitted to the critical exercise of the intellect.
To the instinctive blindness of the judgment of juries we must add
their irresponsibility.
No doubt if the legislator required from all judges a simple Yes
or No, then perhaps the jury would be as good as the magistrate.
But instead of the unexplained verdict which Carmignani called
``the method of the cadi,'' we are of opinion that there should
always be substituted a sentence based on reasons and capable of
control, especially in the positive system of criminal procedure,
which demands from the judge an acquaintance with anthropology and
criminal sociology, and from his sentence the elements necessary
to the subsequent treatment of the convict, in agreement with the
characteristics of his individuality and of his crime.
But not only is the jury devoid of the qualities attributed to it;
it has a fatal defect, which alone is sufficient to condemn this
institution of the law.
In the first place, it is not easy to understand how a dozen
jurymen, selected at hazard, can actually represent the popular
conscience, which indeed frequently protests against their
decisions. In any case, the fundamental conception of the jury is
that the mere fact of its belonging to the people gives it the
right to judge; and as the ancient assemblies are no longer
possible, the essence of the jury is that chance alone must decide
the practical exercise of this popular prerogative.
Now these two conceptions of the jury are in manifest
contradiction with the universal rule of public end private life,
that social functions should be exercised by persons selected as
most capable.
Thus in everyday life we all require of every labourer the work of
which he is more particularly capable. No one would dream, for
instance, of having his watch mended by a cobbler. The
administration of criminal justice, on the contrary, is demanded
of any one we chance to come across, be he grocer or man of
independent means, painter or pensioner, who may never in his life
have witnessed a criminal trial!
The irregularity of our statutes corresponds to the incapacity of
individual jurymen; for it is evident that we cannot impose the
rigorous process of a special mode of procedure on the first-
comer. And the law heightens the absurdity by plainly declaring
that juries must give their decision without regard to the
consequences of their verdict! ``Jurymen fail in their highest
duty when they have regard to the penal law, and consider the
consequences which their verdict may have upon the accused''
(Article 342 of the French code of criminal procedure).
That is to say, criminal justice should be based on the neglect of
the elementary rule of justice, according to which every man ought
always to consider the possible consequences of his actions. And
the criminal law demands from juries this proof of their
blindness (which is fortunately impossible) that they should judge
blindfold, with no regard for the prisoner, or for the
consequences which their verdict may have upon him.
It was impossible that the advocates of the jury should fail to
see the absurdity of these principles; and they have been
compelled to slur them over, at any rate in ordinary practice.
In respect of the composition of juries, restrictions have been
introduced, by means of lists of eligible persons, selection by
lot, the optional exclusion of a certain number of jurymen by the
public prosecutor and the defence, &c. All these expedients,
however, some of which are imposed by necessity, can only insure a
general and presumptive capacity, for they have the merely
negative effect of contributing to exclude the most manifest moral
or intellectual incapacity. But the only capacity which is
necessary in a judge, which is a special and positive capacity, is
not guaranteed by these restrictions, which, after all, are a
negation of the very principle of the jury.
And even if the jury were always composed of persons of adequate
capacity, it would still be condemned by two inevitable arguments
of human psychology.
First, the assembling of several individuals of typical capacity
never affords a guarantee of collective capacity, for in
psychology a meeting of individuals is far from being equivalent
to the aggregate of their qualities. As in chemistry the
combination of two gases may give us a liquid so in
psychology the assembling of individuals of good sense may give us
a body void of good sense. This is a phenomenon of psychological
fermentation, by which individual dispositions, the least good and
wise, that is the most numerous and effective, dominate the better
ones, as the rule dominates the exceptions. This explains the
ancient saying, ``The senators are good men, but the Senate is a
mischievous animal.''
And this fact of collective inferiority, not to say degeneracy, is
observed in casual assemblies, such as juries, meetings, and the
like, far more than in organised and permanent councils of judges,
experts, &c.
Secondly, the jury, even when composed of persons of average
capacity, will never be able in its judicial function to follow
the best rules of intellectual evolution.
Human intelligence, in fact, both individual and collective,
displays these three phases of progressive development: common
sense, reason, and science, which are not essentially different,
but which differ greatly in the degree of their complexity. Now
it is evident that a gathering of individuals of average capacity,
but not technical capacity, will in its decisions only be able to
follow the rules of common sense, or at most, by way of exception,
the rules of reason--that is, of their common mental habits, more
or less directed by a certain natural capacity. But the higher
rules of science, which are still indispensable for a judgment so
difficult as that which bears on crimes and criminals, will always
be unknown to it.
As for the irregularity of the action of a jury, it has been
deemed that this can be provided against by the formal distinction
between a decision of fact and a decision of law, in obedience to
the advice of Montesquieu, that ``to the popular judgment we
should submit a single object, a fact, a single fact.''
But without dwelling on the remark of Hye-Glunek, that in this way
the legal problem, which ought to be as indivisible as the
syllogism which creates it, is cut into two parts, it is evident
that Cambac
On the contrary, a criminal trial is not only concerned with the
direct perception of facts, but also and especially with their
critical reconstruction and psychological appreciation. In civil
law the fact is really accessory, and both sides may be agreed in
its exposition, whilst disputing about the application of the law
to this fact. But in criminal justice the fact is the principal
element, and it is not merely necessary to admit or to decide upon
this or that detail, but we have also to regard its causes and
effects, from the individual and the social point of view, without
speaking of the common difficulty of a critical and evidential
appreciation of a mass of significant circumstances. So that, as
Ellero said, in a criminal trial the decision as to fact is far
more difficult than that as to law. And by this time daily
practice has accumulated so many proofs, more or less scandalous,
of the incapacity of the jury even to appreciate facts, that it is
useless to dwell upon them.
To conclude this question of the jury, it remains to speak of its
defects, which are not the more or less avoidable consequences of
a more or less fortunate application of the principle, which might
be the case with any social institution, but, on the contrary, are
an inevitable consequence of the laws of psychology and sociology.
So far as science is concerned, a fact exists in connection with a
general law. For common sense, on the other hand, the actuality
of the particular fact is the only matter of concern. Hence the
inevitable tendency of the jury to be dominated by isolated
facts, with no other guide than sentiment, which,
especially in southern races, confines all pity to the criminals,
whilst the crime and its victims are all but forgotten. The very
keenness of sentiment which would urge the people to administer
``summary justice'' on the criminal, when surprised in the fact,
turns entirely in his favour when he is brought up at the assizes,
with downcast mien, several months after the crime. Hence we
obtain an impassioned and purblind justice.
And the predominance of sentiment over the intelligence of the
jury is revealed in the now incurable aspect of judicial
discussions. There is no need and no use for legal and
sociological studies and for technical knowledge; the only need is
for oratorical persuasiveness and sentimental declamations. Thus
we have heard an advocate telling a jury that, ``in trials into
which passion enters, we must decide with passion.'' Hence, also,
the deterioration of science in the Assize Courts, and its faulty
application, and its completely erroneous consequences.
Moreover, the verdict of the jury cannot represent the sum of
spontaneous and individual convictions--not only in countries
where juries are exposed to all kinds of influences during the
adjournments of the discussion, but even in England, where
unanimity is required, and where all communication of the jury
with the outer world is forbidden until the end of the trial. For
in every case the influence of the most intriguing or most
respected jurymen in the jury's room is always inevitable. So
that we have even had irresponsible suggestions of public
deliberation on the part of the jury.
Against these defects of the jury its advocates have set an
objection in regard to the trained judge, namely that the habit of
judging crimes and offences irresistibly inclines the judge to
look upon every prisoner as guilty, and to extinguish the
presumption of innocence even in cases where it would be most
justified.
This objection has really a psychological basis; for the
conversion of the conscious into the unconscious, and the
polarisation of the intellectual faculties and dispositions, are
facts of daily observation, determined by the biological law of
the economy of force. But it is not sufficient to make us prefer
juries to judges.
In addition to the fact that this mental habit of judges may be
counteracted by a better selection of magistrates under the
reforms which I have indicated, it is to be observed that this
presumption of innocence, as we have seen, is not so absolute as
some would have us believe, especially in case of a trial which
follows upon a series of inquiries and proofs in; the preliminary
hearing.
Again, this tendency of judges is restrained and corrected by the
publicity of the discussions. And all, or nearly all, the famous
and oft-repeated instances of judicial errors go back to the time
of the inquisitorial and secret trial--in regard to which an
interesting historical problem presents itself; that is to say the
co-existence of the inquisitorial trial, which impairs every
individual guarantee, with the political liberties of the
medi
This is why the number of acquittals, and of the admission of
extenuating circumstances, is always very remarkable, even in the
Correctional Tribunals, which in Italy show proportions not
greatly differing from those of the Assize Courts.
We must remember that, under our modern penal procedure, it is not
the individual guarantees that are lacking, such as the assigning
of reasons for the sentence, the almost total abolition of
punishments which cannot be reconsidered, appeals, reversals,
revision, which would be still more efficacious under the positive
system which we propose.
One logical consequence of the psychological objection raised
against judges would be the granting of a jury even in the
Correctional Tribunals, though the experience which we have of it
in the Assize Courts is not so encouraging as to leave many
advocates of a jury in the minor courts.
But a decisive objection, founded on the most positive data of
sociology, can be raised against the jury.
The law of natural evolution proves that no variation in the
vegetable or animal organism is useful or durable which is not the
outcome of a slow and gradual preparation by organic forces and
external conditions. Thus an organ which ceases to have a
function to discharge is subject to atrophy, and no new organ is
possible or capable of development if it is not required by a new
function to which it corresponds.
What has been said of organic variations is also true of social
institutions. And when the jury is contemplated from this point
of view, we see that it has been artificially grafted by a
stroke of the legislator's pen on the judicial institutions of the
continent, without the long-continued, spontaneous and organic
connections which it had, for instance, with the English people.
The jury had even disappeared from the continental countries in
which it had left traces of former existence; for it had not found
in the race-characteristics or the social organism that favourable
environment which is supplied in England by the natural groundwork
of institutions and principles which, as Mittermaier says, are its
necessary correlative.
The jury, as it has been politically established on the continent
of Europe, is what Spencer calls a false membrane in the social
organism, having no physiological connection with the rest of the
body politic. So that it is not yet acclimatised, even in France,
after a century of uninterrupted trial.[18]
the jury has been added artificially to the magistracy,
this is on the other hand a genuine example of non-natural growth.
And if it be said that the jury, as an advance from the
homogeneous to the heterogeneous, indicates a higher degree of
social evolution, we must draw a distinction between
differentiations which amount to evolution and those which, on the
contrary, are symptoms of dissolution. Division of labour,
physiological or social, is a true evolutionary differentiation;
whilst modifications introduced by a disease in the animal
organism, or by a revolt in the social organism, are but the
beginning of a more or less extended dissolution.
Now the jury belongs to the domain of social pathology, for it is
essentially contrary to the law of the specialisation of
functions, according to which every organ which becomes more
adapted to a given task is no longer adapted to any other. It is
only in the lower organisms that the same tissue or organ can
perform different functions, whilst in the vertebrates the stomach
can only serve for digestion, the lungs for oxygenation, and so
on. Similarly in primitive societies, each individual is soldier,
hunter, tiller of the soil, &c., whilst with the progress of
social evolution every man performs his special function, and
becomes unfitted for other labours. In the jury we have a return
to the primitive confusion of social functions, by giving to any
chance comer, who may be an excellent labourer, or artist, a very
delicate judicial function, for which he has no capacity to-day,
and will have no available experience to-morrow.
In modern societies, to tell the truth, there is another function
assigned to all citizens, outside of their special capacity, and
that is the electoral duty. But the cases are very different.
The franchise does not demand a labour so difficult and delicate
as critical judgment, and the reconstruction of the conditions of
an act and of its author. It has no direct influence on the
positive function of the person elected, but on the contrary it is
a confession of the special incapacity of the elector to do what
he intrusts to the capacity of the person elected. The franchise
is but an elementary function of the assimilation of physiological
elements in the social organism, which in the animal organism is
performed by the aggregate of living cells, and in society by the
aggregate of individuals, not being idiots or criminals, who
possess the minimum of social energy.
Far different is the administration of criminal justice, a
technical and very noble function, which has nothing in common
with the elementary function of the franchise. I could not indeed
agree with the assertion of Carrara, who thought it a
contradiction to deny to the people any participation in the
exercise of the judicial authority when they are allowed to
participate in the exercise of legislative authority. In the
first place, the people have but a very indirect share in the
legislative function, and, even where the referendum exists, very
useful as I believe it to be, the people have only a simple,
almost negative function, to say Yes or No to a law which they
have not made, and would have had no technical ability to make.
Thus the argument of Carrara could only lead to the popular
election of judges, as of legislators, and to a control by the
people of the administrative action of the judges when elected No
doubt this would have theoretical advantages, though in my opinion
it would raise practical difficulties, especially in nations which
do not possess a very keen conscience and political activity,
after enfeeblement by centuries of despotism, or of political and
administrative tutelage and centralisation.
The jury, then, is a retrogressive institution, as shown by
history and sociology, for it represents the medi as to eliminate its more serious and frequent
disadvantages.
The theoretical distinction of the classical school between
ordinary and political crimes is not very precise, for the so-
called political crimes are either not crimes (as when they are
confined to the manifestation of an idea), or they are common
crimes which spring from a lofty and social passion in
individuals, who have the characteristics of the criminal by
passion, or, in other words,--are but quasi-criminals; or else
they are common crimes committed by ordinary malefactors, under
the pretext of a popular idea. Instead of distinguishing crimes,
I think we ought to distinguish between ordinary and political
criminals, according to their determining motives, and the social
bearings and historical moment of their acts. At the same time,
whilst our criminal laws retain this distinction, I think it is
useful to keep the jury for the trial of political crimes and
offences, and for those connected with the press and with society
as a whole; for if in these cases the jury might yield to the
influence of class interests and prejudices (as for instance in
the trial of actions arising out of the conflict of capital and
labour), the danger will still be less than it would be with
judges alone, who are not sufficiently independent of the
executive, which in its turn is but the secular arm of the
dominant class, and which therefore combines the interests and
prejudices of the political order with those of the economic and
moral order which dominate the jury.
For common crimes it would be necessary to with hold from a
jury the trial of prisoners who avow their crime. The essence of
a trial by indictment is the principle that the discussion as to
punishment is a private affair, and it has no further ground for
existence when one of the parties withdraws from the duel. Hence
the English mistrust of a prisoner's confession of guilt, which in
the inquisitorial trial, on the other hand, is a mainstay of the
evidence. Yet I believe that in these cases the Scottish system
is preferable to the English. In England the judge begins by
asking the prisoner if he is Guilty or Not Guilty, and in case of
a confession he passes sentence without a verdict from the jury.
In Scotland, on the contrary, the prosecutor can furnish his
proof, in spite of the confession of the prisoner, and demand a
verdict from the jury. In this way it is possible to avoid not
only a scandalous acquittal of prisoners who have confessed their
guilt (as happens in Italy, France, and elsewhere), but also the
danger that the confession may not be true, and that an innocent
man may be condemned.
Juries ought, moreover, as proposed by M. Ellero, to specify
attenuating circumstances, on each of which a special question
ought to be put to them.
The jury ought also to have the right of spontaneously finding in
a sense less serious than that of the charge, even when no
corresponding question has been put to them.
But at the same time it cannot be denied that these would only be
palliatives, more or less efficacious.
The only positive conclusion is that, whilst retaining the jury
for crimes of the political and social order, we should aim
at its abolition for common crimes, immediately after securing
stringent reforms as to the independence and capacity of the
judges.
of
substituting for our present penal organisation a better system
corresponding to the governing conditions of crime, more effectual
for social defence, and at the same time less gratuitously
disastrous for the individuals with whom it deals.
The positive school, in addition to the partial reforms proposed
by Lombroso, and by myself in the second edition of this work, has
put forward in the _Criminology_ of Garofalo a ``rational system
of punishment,'' whereof it is desirable to give a summary.
I. MURDERERS (moral insensibility and instinctive
cruelty) who commit--
Murder for greed, or other selfish
gratification Criminal Lunatic Asylums: or
Murder unprovoked by the victim the death penalty.
Murder with attendant cruelty
II. VIOLENT OR IMPULSIVE CHARACTERS (deficiency
of the sense of pity, with prejudices on the
subject of honour, on the duty of revenge, &c.).
Adults who commit--
Violent assault suddenly provoked Removal of the offender from the
by a cruel injury neighbourhood of the victim or
Justifiable homicide in self-defence his family.
Transportation to an island, colony
Homicide to avenge honour (isolated or village--at liberty, under
or endemic) supervision (for an indefinite
period, with from 5 to 10 years
supervision).
Bodily injury during a quarrel; Damages and fine: heavy for such
slight and transitory malice; as can pay. Alternative
blows; threats; slander; verbal penalty:--deduction from wages,
insults or forced labour. Imprisonment
in case of refusal.
Malicious injury or disfigurement; Criminal lunatic asylum (for
mutilation; rape or outrage with hysterical or epileptic), or
violence; restraint on personal Transportation for an indefinite
liberty period, with supervision from 5
to 10 years.
Absolute elimination of the criminal
Penalty of death
Criminal lunatic asylum.
Transportation with liberty.
Perpetual banishment.
Relative elimination Banishment for various periods.
Agricultural colonies.
Interdiction from a particular
neighbourhood.
By payment of money.
Reparation of damages Deduction from wages.
Fine (going to the State) Forced labour, without
Indemnification of the victims imprisonment.
Imprisonment for fixed periods for special offences (forgery and outbreaks);
or as alternative to indemnification or forced labour.
Interdiction of certain professions and public functions.
M. Liszt also, agreeing with the positive school in regard to the
necessity of a radical reform in the penal system, yet with
certain reservations, has propounded a scheme, which, however, as
it does not sufficiently consider various classes of criminals,
whom he divides merely into the habitual and the occasional, would
need completion, especially in comparison with the well-reasoned
scheme of Garofalo. M. Liszt's system is as follows:--
_Punishment by fines_.
In proportion to the property of the
offender--not alternative with For _offences_ (with alternative
imprisonment imprisonment).
Capable of being worked out by For _contraventions of the law_
forced labour without imprisonment (without imprisonment).
_Conditional sentences_.
For first offenders condemned to
imprisonment, with or without For _offences_ punishable by
sureties for three years imprisonment.
__Imprisonment_ (for an indeterminate period, a maximum and minimum
being enacted).
Separate confinement--six weeks to two years.
House of detention (separate for 2 to 15 years (with police
one year, then gradual relaxation supervision and assistance of
discharged prisoners)--or for life.
_Indemnifications_ (always as a civil liability) added to other penalties.
I believe, however, that it is necessary, before laying down
practical and detailed schemes, more or less complete, to
establish certain general criteria, based upon the
anthropological, physical, and social data of crime, such as may
lead up to a positive system of social defence.
These fundamental criteria, it seems to me, can be reduced to the
three following:--(1) No fixity in the periods of segregation of
criminals; (2) the social and public character of the exaction of
damages; (3) the adaptation of defensive measures to the various
types of criminals.
1. For every crime which is committed, the problem of punishment
ought no longer to consist in administering a particular dose, as
being proportionate to the moral culpability of the criminal; but
it should be limited to the question whether by the actual
conditions (breach of law or infliction of injury) and by the
personal conditions (the anthropological type of the criminal) it
is necessary to separate the offender from his social environment
for ever, or for a longer or shorter period, according as he is or
is not regarded as capable of being restored to society, or
whether it is sufficient to exact from him a strict reparation of
the injury which he has inflicted.
Under this head there is a radical contradiction. The
existing schemes of punishment, differing in their machinery (and
out of harmony with the sentence of the judge, often even with the
terms of the law), are all based on the principle of fixed periods
of punishment, graduated into hundreds and thousands of possible
doses, and have regard far more to the crime than to the criminal.
On the other hand we have the positive system of punishment, based
on the principle of an _unfixed segregation_ of the criminal,
which is a logical consequence of the theory that punishment ought
not to be the visitation of a crime by a retribution, but rather a
defence of society adapted to the danger personified by the
criminal.
This principle of unfixed punishment is not new, but it is only
the positive theory which has given it system and life. The idea
of justice as assigning punishment to a crime, measured out by
days and weeks, is too much opposed to the principle of the
indeterminate sentence to allow it to receive any systematic trial
under the sway of the classical theories. There has been only an
isolated and exceptional use of it here and there, such as the
seclusion of mad criminals in special asylums, ``during her
Majesty's pleasure,'' in England. Nevertheless, personal freedom
(which is held to be violated by seclusion for unfixed periods) is
greatly respected by the English people.
The fundamental principle of law is that of a restriction imposed
by the necessity of social existence. It is evident, therefore,
to begin with, that seclusion for an unfixed period, as for life,
is in no way irreconcilable with this principle of law, when
imposed by necessity. Thus it has been proposed, even by
the classical school, as a mode of compensation or adjustment.
If, indeed, we admit an increase of punishment for a first
relapse, it is logical that this increase should be proportional
to the number of relapses, until we come to perpetual seclusion or
transportation, and even to death, as under the medi especially on the disadvantages of the penal
systems inspired by the classical theories, though they run
somewhat to excess, like Mittelst barbarous instruments, are
too deeply opposed to the sentiment of humanity to be any longer
possible in a penal code. At the same time they are admissible as
disciplinary punishments, under the form of cold baths, electric
shocks, &c., all the more because, whether prescribed by law or
not, they are inevitable in prisons, and, when not regulated by
law, give rise to many abuses, as was shown at the Stockholm
Prison Conference in 1878.
I agree with Kirchenheim that Dr. Kraepelin's scheme of seclusion
for unfixed periods is more practical and hopeful. When the
measure of punishment is fixed beforehand, the judge, as Villert
says, ``is like a doctor who, after a superficial diagnosis,
orders a draft for the patient, and names the day when he shall be
sent out of hospital, without regard to the state of his health at
the time.'' If he is cured before the date fixed, he must still
remain in the hospital; and he must go when the time is up, cured
or not.
Semal reached the same conclusion in his paper on ``conditional
liberation,'' at the second Congress of Criminal Anthropology.
And this notion of segregation for unfixed periods, put forward in
1867 for incorrigible criminals by the Swiss Prison Reform
Association, has already made great progress, especially in
England and America, since the Prison Congress of London (1872)
discussed this very question of indefinite sentences, which the
National Prison Congress at Cincinnati had approved in the
preceding year.
In 1880 M. Garofalo and I both spoke in favour of
indefinite segregation, though only for incorrigible
recidivists; and the same idea was strikingly supported in M. Van
Hamel's speech at the Prison Congress at Rome (1885). The
eloquent criminal expert of Amsterdam, speaking ``on the
discretion which should be left to the judge in awarding
punishment,'' made a primary distinction between habitual
criminals, incorrigible and corrigible, and occasional criminals.
``For the first group, perpetual imprisonment should depend on
certain conditions fixed by law, and on the decision of the judge
after a further inquiry. For the second group, the application of
an undefined punishment after the completion of the first sentence
will have to depend in the graver cases on the conditions laid
down by law, and in less serious cases upon the same conditions
together with the decision of the judge, who will always decide
from time to time, after further inquiry, as to the necessity for
prolonging the imprisonment. For the third group, the judge will
have to be limited by law, in deciding the punishment, by special
maximums, and with a general minimum.''
The Prison Congress of Rome naturally did not accept the principle
of punishment for unfixed periods. More than that, advancing on
the classical tendency, it decided that ``the law should fix the
maximum of punishment beyond which the judge may not in any case
go; and also the minimum, which however may be diminished when the
judge considers that the crime was accompanied by extenuating
circumstances not foreseen by the law.''
It is only of late years, in consequence of the reaction
against short terms of imprisonment, that the principle of
segregation for unfixed periods has been developed and accepted by
various writers, in spite of the feeble objections of Tallack,
Wahlberg, Lamezan, von Jagemann, &c.
Apart, also, from theoretical discussion, this principle has been
applied in a significant manner in the United States, by means of
the ``indeterminate sentence.'' The House of Correction at Elmira
(New York) for young criminals carries into effect, with special
regulations of physical and moral hygiene, the indeterminate
imprisonment of young prisoners; and this principle, approved by
the Prison Congresses at Atalanta{sic} (1887), Buffalo (1888), and
Nashville (1889), has been applied also in the New York prisons,
and in the States of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and
Ohio.
M. Liszt proposes that the indeterminate character of punishment
should be only relative, that is to say, limited between a minimum
and a maximum, these being laid down in the sentence of the judge.
Special commissions for supervising the administration of
punishment, consisting of the Governor of the prison, the Public
Prosecutor, the judge who heard the case, and two members
nominated by Government (instead of the court which passed
sentence, as proposed by Villert and Van Hamel), should decide on
the actual duration of the punishment, after having examined the
convict and his record. Thus these commissions would be able to
liberate at once (with or without conditions) or to order a
prolongation of punishment, especially for habitual criminals.
definite by
successive steps, which will no longer be detached, as they now
are, from the action of the magistrate, and taken without his
knowledge, but will be a systematic continuation of his work.
Permanent commissions for the supervision of punishment, composed
of administrative functionaries, experts in criminal anthropology,
magistrates, and representatives of the Public Prosecutor and the
defence, would render impossible that desertion and oblivion of
the convict which now follow almost immediately on the delivery of
the sentence, with the execution of which the judge has nothing to
do, except to see that he is represented. Pardon, or conditional
liberation, or the serving of the full punishment, are all left at
present to the chance of a blind official routine. These
commissions would have great social importance, for they would
mean on one hand the protection of society against imprudent
liberation of the most dangerous criminals, and on the other hand
the protection of the less dangerous against the danger of an
imprisonment recognised as excessive and unnecessary.
Allied to the principle of indeterminate segregation is that of
conditional release, which with the progressive prison system,
known as the Irish, is now accepted in nearly all European
countries. But conditional liberation in the system of definite
punishments, without distinction amongst the types of criminals,
is both contradictory in theory and ineffectual in practice. At
present, indeed, it has only a mechanical and almost impersonal
applica successive
Congresses at Stockholm (1878), Rome (1885), and St. Petersburg
(1889). On the contrary, the Congress at Stockholm decided that,
``reserving minor and special punishments for certain slight
infractions of the law, or for such as do not point to the corrupt
nature of their authors, it is desirable to adopt for every prison
system the greatest possible legal assimilation of punishments by
imprisonment, with no difference except in their duration, and the
consequences following upon release.''[20]
very great, and the managing staff
have no adequate notions of criminal biology and psychology. How
can a governor individualise the penal treatment of four or five
hundred prisoners? And does not the cellular system, which
reduces the characteristic manifestations of the personal
dispositions of prisoners to a minimum, levelling them all by the
uniformity of routine and silence, render it impossible to observe
and get to know the special character of each condemned person,
and so specialising the discipline? Where, too, are we to find
the necessary governors and warders who would know how to
discharge this difficult duty? The solid fact that particular
houses of correction or punishment are in excellent condition when
their governors have the psychological intuition of a De Metz, a
Crofton, a Spagliardi, or a Roukawichnikoff, and languish when he
departs, strikingly demonstrates that the whole secret of success
lies in the spirit of a wise governor, skilled in psychology,
rather than in the slender virtue of the cell.
Just as an imperfect code with good judges succeeds better than a
``monumental'' code with foolish judges, so a prison system,
however ingenious and symmetrical, is worthless without a staff to
correspond.
And as the question of the staff is always very serious,
especially for financial reasons, I believe that, instead of the
impracticable idea of individualisation in punishment, we ought to
substitute that of classification, which is equally efficacious
and more easily applied. It cannot be denied that criminal
anthropologists are not all agreed on the classification of
Mad Criminals. Male. Female.
Incendiarism ... ... ... ... 24 ... 1
Military offences ... ... ... 21 ... --
Attempted suicide ... ... ... 3 ...
In Germany, in the prison at Waldheim, the proportion of mad
criminals to the corresponding classes of ordinary criminals was
as follows:--
Percentage
Crimes. In Prison. Insane.
Homicide, actual or attempted ... 74 ... 17.6
Murder and malicious wounding ... 51 ... 9.8
Highway robbery with violence ... 64 ... 12.5
Incendiarism ... ... ... ... ... 219 ... 6.8
Rape ... ... ... ... ... ... 52 ... 5.8
Indecent assault... ... ... ... 299 ... 5.7
Perjury ... ... ... ... ... ... 220 ... 2.7
Military crimes ... ... ... ... 23 ... 21.7
Crimes against property ... ... ... 5,116 ... 1.9
Other offences ... ... ... ... 158 ... 0.6
---- ----
Total ... ... 6,276 ... 2.7
That is to say, there was (1) a very large proportion of madmen
amongst the military offenders, which may point to the effect of
military life, or else a careless selection for conscription, or
both causes taken together; and (2) a greater proportion of mad
criminals amongst the more serious offenders, partly because the
authors of crimes of violence are subjected to more strict and
frequent observation for madness.
It seems to me that this fact, which is also confirmed by the
figures for England, is the most cogent argument in favour of
criminal lunatic asylums.
For born criminals, since, as Dr. Maudsley says, we are face to
face, if not exactly with a degenerate species, at least with a
degenerate variety of the draw from the death penalty the only positive utility
which it possesses, namely, artificial selection, then we must
have courage enough to apply it resolutely in all cases where it
is necessary from this point of view, that is to say, to all born
criminals, who are the authors of the most serious crimes of
violence. In Italy, for example, it would be necessary to execute
at least one thousand persons every year, and in France nearly two
hundred and fifty, in place of the annual seven or eight.
Otherwise the death penalty must be considered as an unserviceable
and neglected means of terror, merely to be printed in the codes;
and in that case it would be acting more seriously to abolish it.
So regarded it is too much like those motionless scarecrows which
husbandmen set up in their fields, dotted about with the foolish
notion that the birds will be frightened away from the corn. They
may cause a little alarm at first sight; but by and by the birds,
seeing that the scarecrow never moves and cannot hurt them, lose
their fear, and even perch on the top of it. So it is with
criminals when they see that the death penalty is never or very
rarely applied; and one cannot doubt that criminals judge of the
law, not by its formulation in the codes, but by its practical and
daily application.
Since the deterrent efficacy of punishments in general, including
the death penalty, is quite insignificant for the born criminals,
who are insensible and improvident, the rare cases of execution
will certainly not cure the disease of society. Only the
slaughter of several hundred murderers every year would have
executions in 800 years (3,981
for theft, and 1,009 for homicide), that is an average of 700 in
each century, in the city of Ferrara alone. And at Rome,
according to the records of the Convent of St. John the Beheaded,
between 1500 and 1770 there were 5,280 executions, or 1,955 in
each century, in the city of Rome alone. Now, if we consider the
proportion of population in Ferrara and Rome to that of Italy as a
whole, we reach an enormous number of executions in former
centuries, which can scarcely have been fewer than four hundred
every year. afflicting the prisoner, but also at arousing in him, if
possible, the moral sense, or at strengthening him, and opening up
to him a path by which he can hope to be readmitted into society,
amended and rehabilitated. Perpetuity of punishment excludes this
possibility.''
The framers of the Dutch penal code replied to these observations
of Professor Pols, first in the name of common sense, that
``punishment is not inflicted for the benefit of the prisoner, but
for that of society,'' and secondly, with something of irony, that
``even for the sake of the abolition of capital punishment, and to
prevent a reaction in favour of this punishment, we must uphold
the right of shutting up for ever the few malefactors whose
release would be dangerous.''
It is entirely futile to consider the amendment of criminals as
opposed to imprisonment for life, when it is known that born
criminals, authors of the most serious crimes, for whom such
punishment is reserved, are precisely those whose amendment is
impossible, and that the moral sense attributed to them is only a
psychological fallacy of the classical psychologist, who
attributes to the conscience of the criminal that which he feels
in his own honest and normal conscience.
But it is easy enough to see that this opposition to perpetual
detention, though it has remained without effect, as being too
doctrinaire and sentimental, is only a symptom of the historical
tendency of the classical schools, entirely in favour of the
criminal, and always tending to the relaxation of punishments.
The interests of society are too much disregarded when it
is sought to pass from the abolition of capital punishment to that
of imprisonment for life. If the tendency is not checked, we may
expect to see some classical expert demanding the abolition of all
punishment for these unfortunate criminals, with their delicate
moral sensibilities!
The question, therefore, is between transportation or indefinite
seclusion.
Much has been written for and against transportation, and there
was a lively discussion of the problem in Italy, some twenty years
ago, between M. Beltrani Scalia, a former director-general of
prisons, and the advocates of this form of elimination of
criminals. Without going into the details of the controversy, it
is evident that the experience of countries like England, which
for a long time transported its criminals at a cost of hundreds of
millions, and then abandoned the practice, is in itself a
noteworthy example.
Yet it is only an objection, so far as it goes, against
transportation as formerly practised, that is to say, with
enormous prisons built in distant lands. M. Beltrani Scalia
justly said that we might as well build them at home, for they
will cost less and be more serviceable. The example of France in
its practical application of this policy is not encouraging.
However, there is in transportation, as in the death penalty, an
unquestionable element of reason. For when it is perpetual, with
very faint chances of return, it is the best mode of ridding
society of its most injurious factors, without our being compelled
to keep them in those compulsory human hives which are known as
cellular prisons.
on the draft penal code
that prisoners might also be detained in the colonies. Soon
afterwards the proposal was renewed by Deputy De Zerbi, and
accepted by M. Beltrani Scalia, director-general of prisons.
In a similar manner M. Prins declares himself in favour of
transportation for Belgium, since the constitution of the Congo
State.
But it is my matured opinion that transportation ought not to be
an end in itself. The penal colony for adults ought to be a
pioneer of the free agricultural colony. The problem of a penal
colony in our African possessions cannot, therefore, be solved in
advance of two other questions.
Before all, we must see whether these possessions offer suitable
districts for agricultural colonisation. And secondly, we must
consider whether convicts would not cost less to transport into
districts nearer home which need to be cleared, a plan which would
also prevent their going over to the enemy, becoming leaders or
guides of the barbarous tribes which are at war with us.
In any case, whether we decide on transportation to the interior
or beyond the seas, for born and habitual criminals, there is
still the question as to the form of seclusion.
In this connection the idea has been suggested of ``establishments
for incorrigibles,'' or hardened criminals, wherein should be
confined for life, or (the same thing in this case) for an
indefinite period, born criminals who have committed serious
crimes, habitual criminals, and confirmed recidivists.
Prison Congress
at Stockholm and at the Soci the
penal and penitentiary point of view there are any absolutely
incorrigible criminals''--which is pure pedantry--``yet since
experience shows that there are in fact individuals who resist the
combined action of punishment and imprisonment''--a notable
admission!--``and who habitually and almost professionally renew
their violation of the laws of society, this section of the
Congress is unanimously of opinion that it is necessary to adopt
special measures against such individuals.''
Similarly the International Union of Penal Law, in its session at
Berne (August, 1890), expressed the opinions of the majority in
the following terms:--``There are malefactors for whom, in view of
their physical and moral condition, the constant application of
ordinary punishments is inadequate. In this class are specially
included the hardened recidivists, who ought to be considered as
degenerate criminals, or criminals by profession. Malefactors
ought to be subjected, according to the degree of their
degeneration, or of the danger which they threaten, to special
measures, framed with the purpose of preventing them from
inflicting harm, and of amending them if possible.'' And in the
session at Christiania (August, 1891), after the remarkable
contribution of Van Hamel, the Union, after rejecting the
proposition of Felisch, which spoke of ``the uncorrected'' in
place of the ``incorrigible,'' unanimously approved the
conclusions of Van Hamel:--``With a view to the more complete
study of the character and injurious influence of habitual
offenders, notably of such as are incorrigible (a study which is
absolutely indis pensable for legislation), the Union
instructs its officers to urge upon the various Governments the
great importance of statistics of recidivism which shall be
detailed, precise, uniform, and adapted for comparative study.
For incorrigible habitual offenders it is absolutely necessary
that the trial on the last charge shall not definitely determine
the treatment of the offender, but that the decision shall be
carried on to a further inquiry, which shall have regard to the
offender personally, to his past, and to his conduct during a
fixed period of observation.
It is now necessary to inquire what form the perpetual or
indefinite segregation of the criminal should assume.
Two great innovations in regard to prisons, as M. Tarde observes,
have been made or developed within the past century, which are not
yet adopted in every country: penal colonies, whereof
transportation is only a factor, and the prison cell. The cell
has assumed a leading position since it was brought over from
America to Europe, where, however, the cellular prisons of St.
Michael at Rome, and of Gand, had preceded it.
The cellular system, a product of the reaction against the
enormous physical and moral putrefaction of the inmates of common
prisons and labour establishments, may have had, and doubtless
still has many advocates, amongst other reasons for the spirit of
pietism and religious penitence which always goes with it; but it
is open to strong criticism.
There has already been, amongst the same prison experts, a
certain retrogressive movement in regard to isolation. Absolute
and continued isolation, indeed, both by day and by night
(``solitary confinement'') was at first recommended, even to the
introduction, grotesque in spite of good intentions, of hoods and
masks for the prisoners, a medi first in
England, where it was devised by Maconochie, next in Ireland,
which has given it a name, alternated with that of Sir W. Crofton.
This is the most symmetrically perfect machinery, though reminding
one somewhat of a company of marionettes. It confirms what was
said by Haeckel, that the actual is a summary of the moods of
aspiration, for it precisely sums up the systems which preceded
it, each of which constitutes a phase of the progressive system.
There is first of all a period of brotherly charity--absolute
isolation for the prisoner to fall back upon his conscience, or to
listen to the voice of remorse, or to receive an impression of
devotion and fear. After this comes the Auburnian phase, of
isolation by night and labour (when labour is accorded) by day,
with the constraint of silence. Then an intermediary period in
the agricultural colony or labour-gang outside the prison, like a
period of convalescence, to accustom the lungs to the keen air of
liberty. This is the phase added by Sir W. Crofton to the English
system. Lastly comes the period of conditional release (on ticket
of leave), whereby the last portion of the punishment is remitted,
and will count as expiated if during the time of liberation, and
for a succeeding period, the convict does not commit another
crime.
The progressive or retrogressive passage from one phase to another
is made by a sort of automatic regulator, depending on the number
of marks gained or lost by the prisoner through his good or bad
behaviour, to which we know the moral or psychological value to be
attached--a value purely negative.
of the
prisoners, especially of occasional offenders. In this connection
the testimony of Faucher, Ferrus, and Tarde is thoroughly just,
that in prison administration we ought to observe a distinction
between dwellers in town and country.[23]
Congress at Rome:--``What modifications
would be possible, in accordance with recent experience, in the
construction of cellular prisons so as to render it more simple
and less costly, without detriment to the necessary conditions of
a sound and intelligent application of the system?'' Detailed
recommendations were agreed to on the motion of M. Herbette; but
the system is unchanged, with requirements which can be only very
slightly reduced.